(5/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume V: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories
Various
| Series: | 15 [5] |
| Published: | 2010 |
Product Description
This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty science fiction short stories by more than forty different authors. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Included within this work are stories by Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Harry Harrison, H. Beam Piper, Edmund Hamilton, Paul Ernst, Fredric Brown, Randall Garrett, Jack Williamson, Stanley Weinbaum, C.M. Kornbluth, and many others.
This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.
Contents:
OPERATION EARTHWORM by Joe Archibald
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER by Robert Andrew Arthur
LAST RESORT by Stephen Bartholomew
WHERE THERE'S HOPE, by Jerome Bixby
ZERO HOUR by Alexander Blade
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond
A PRIZE FOR EDIE by Jesse Franklin Bone
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW by Miles John Breuer
HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
HARD GUY by H. B. Carleton
THE PERFECTIONISTS by Arnold Castle
COMPETITION by James Causey
FINAL WEAPON by Everett B. Cole
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT by Ray Cummings
THE GUN by Philip K. Dick
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA by Paul Ernst
THE GIFT BEARER by Charles L. Fontenay
EXILE by H. B. Fyfe
AFTER A FEW WORDS by Randall Garrett
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK by Anthony Gilmore
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET by Tom Godwin
THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton
TOY SHOP by Harry Harrison
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by C.M. Kornbluth
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER by Roger Kuykendall
JOIN OUR GANG? by Sterling E. Lanier
DISTURBING SUN by Philip Latham
THE YILLIAN WAY by Keith Laumer
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT by William Lee
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM by Herbert Livingston
G-R-R-R...! by Robert Donald Locke
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD by Robert Donald Locke
THE BIG TOMORROW by Paul Lohrman
THE MAN FROM TIME by Frank Belknap Long
WHEN I GROW UP by Richard E. Lowe
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C.C. MacApp
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND by Stephen Marlowe
PUSHBUTTON WAR by Joseph P. Martino
REX EX MACHINA by Frederic Max
DEAREST by H. Beam Piper
SORRY: WRONG DIMENSION by Ross Rocklynne
THE SECOND VOICE by Mann Rubin
CREATURES OF VIBRATION by Harl Vincent
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY by Stanley G. Weinbaum
THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson
UNDER ARCTIC ICE by H.G. Winter
LONESOME HEARTS by Russ Winterbotham
(5/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume V: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories
Various
| Series: | 15 [5] |
| Published: | 2010 |
Halcyon Classics Series
THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME V:
AN ANTHOLOGY OF 50 SHORT STORIES
Contents
OPERATION EARTHWORM by Joe Archibald
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER by Robert Andrew Arthur
LAST RESORT by Stephen Bartholomew
WHERE THERE'S HOPE, by Jerome Bixby
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond
A PRIZE FOR EDIE by Jesse Franklin Bone
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW by Miles John Breuer
HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
THE PERFECTIONISTS by Arnold Castle
FINAL WEAPON by Everett B. Cole
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT by Ray Cummings
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA by Paul Ernst
THE GIFT BEARER by Charles L. Fontenay
AFTER A FEW WORDS by Randall Garrett
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK by Anthony Gilmore
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET by Tom Godwin
THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by C.M. Kornbluth
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER by Roger Kuykendall
JOIN OUR GANG? by Sterling E. Lanier
DISTURBING SUN by Philip Latham
THE YILLIAN WAY by Keith Laumer
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT by William Lee
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM by Herbert Livingston
G-R-R-R...! by Robert Donald Locke
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD by Robert Donald Locke
THE BIG TOMORROW by Paul Lohrman
THE MAN FROM TIME by Frank Belknap Long
WHEN I GROW UP by Richard E. Lowe
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C.C. MacApp
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND by Stephen Marlowe
PUSHBUTTON WAR by Joseph P. Martino
REX EX MACHINA by Frederic Max
SORRY: WRONG DIMENSION by Ross Rocklynne
THE SECOND VOICE by Mann Rubin
CREATURES OF VIBRATION by Harl Vincent
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY by Stanley G. Weinbaum
THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson
UNDER ARCTIC ICE by H.G. Winter
LONESOME HEARTS by Russ Winterbotham
OPERATION EARTHWORM
by Joe Archibald
Here he is again, the irrepressible Septimus Spink, in a tale as rollicking as an elder giant juggling the stars and the planets in his great, golden hands and laughing mirthfully as one tiny world--our own--goes spinning away from him into caverns measureless to man. With specifications drawn to scale, Joe Archibald, whose versatility with the quill never ceases to amaze us, has managed with slangy insouciance to achieve a rare triumph over space and time, and to aureole Spink in a resplendent sunburst of imperishable renown.
Septimus Spink didn't need to read Jules Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth." He had more amazing ideas of his own.
Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022--Septimus Spink, the first Earthman to reach and return from New Mu in a flying saucer, threw a hydroactive bombshell into the meeting of the leading cosmogonists at the University of Cincinnatus today. The amazing Spink, uninvited, crashed this august body of scientists and laughed at a statement made by Professor Apsox Zalpha as to the origin of Earth and other planets.
"That theory is older than the discovery of the antiquated zipper," Spink orated. "Ha, you big plexidomes still believe the Earth was condensed from a filament, and was ejected by the sun under the gravitational attraction of a big star passing close to the Earth's surface. First it was a liquid drop and cooling solidified it after a period of a few million years. You citizens still think it has a liquid core. Some of you think it is pretty hot inside like they had atomic furnaces all fired up. Ha, the exterior ain't so hot either what with taxes we have to pay after seven wars."
Professor Yzylch Mgogylvy, of the University of Juno, took violent exception to Septimus Spink's derisive attitude and stoutly defended the theory of adiabatic expansion. It was at this juncture that Spink practically disintegrated the meeting.
"For the last seventy years," he orated, "all we have thought about was outer space. All that we have been hepped up about is what is up in the attic and have forgot the cellar. What proof has any knucklehelmet got that nobody lives far under the coal mines and the oil pockets? Something lives everywhere! Adam never believed anythin' lived in water until he was bit by a crab. Gentlemen, I am announcin' for the benefit of the press and everybody from here to Mars and Jupiter and back that I intend to explore inner space! I have already got the project underway."
A near panic ensued as representatives of the press made for the audio-viso stellartypes. "You think volcanoes are caused by heat generated far down inside the earth. They are only boils or carbuncles. Awright, where do earthquakes come from?" Here Spink laughed once more. "They are elastic waves sent out through the body of the Earth, huh? Their observed times of transmission give a means of finding their velocities of propagation at great depths. I read that in a book that should be in the Terra-firmament Institute along with the Spirit of St. Louis."
Septimus Spink walked out at this point, surrounded by Interplanetary scribes, one of whom was Exmud R. Zmorro. Spink informed the Fourteenth Estate that he would let them have a gander at the model of his inner space machine in due time. He inferred that one of his financial backers in the fabulous enterprise was Aquintax Djupont, and that the fact that Djupont had recently been brain-washed at the Neuropsychiatorium in Metropolita had no bearing on the case whatsoever.
* * * * *
I am seeing and listening to that news item right now which has been repeated a dozen times the last twenty-four hours as if nobody could believe it. I am Septimus Spink, and descended from a long line of Spinks that began somewhere back at the time they put up the pyramids.
All my ancestors was never satisfied with what progress they saw during when they lived, and they are the reasons we have got where we are today. And if there was no Spinks today the scientists would get away with saying that the Earth was only a drop from the sun that got a crust on it after millions of years. And they want to send me back to get fitted for a duronylon strait jacket again.
An hour after I shut off the viso-screen, and while I am taking my calves' liver and onion capsules, my friend and space-lanceman, D'Ambrosia Zahooli comes in. He just qualifies as a spaceman as he takes up very little and is not much easier to look at than a Nougatine. Once D'Ambrosia applied for a plasticectomy but the surgeons at the Muzayo clinic just laughed and told him there was a limit to science even in the year 2022. But the citizen was at home when they divided the brains. Of course that is only my opinion. He is to fly with me into inner space.
"Greetin's and salutations, and as the Martians say, 'max nabiscum,' Sep," Zahooli says. "I have been figuring that we won't have to go deeper than about four thousand kilometers. All that is worryin' me is gettin' back up. I still do not fully believe that we won't melt. Supposin' Professor Zalpha is right and that we will dive down into a core of live iron ore. You have seen them pour it out of the big dippers in the mills, Sep."
"Columbus started off like us," I says. "Who knew what he would find or where he ended up? Chris expected to fall right off the edge of the world, but did that scare him? No!"
"Of course you can count on me," Zahooli says. "When do we start building this mechanical mole?"
"In just two days," I says. "Our backers have purchased an extinct spaceship factory not far from Commonwealth Seven. Yeah, we will call our project 'Operation Earthworm,' pal."
D'Ambrosia sits down and starts looking chicken. "We wouldn't get no astrogator in his right mind to go with us, Sep. How many times the thrust will we need over what we would use if we was just cutting space? We start out in about a foot of topsoil, then some hard rock and then more hard rock. Can we harness enough energy to last through the diggin'? Do you mind if I change my mind for a very good reason which is that I'm an awful coward?"
"Of course not," I says. "It would be a coincidence if you quit though, my dear old friend, and right after Coordinator One found out who was sipping Jovian drambuie on a certain space bistro last Monday with his Venutian wife."
"You have sold me," Zahooli says. "I wouldn't miss this trip for one of those four-legged turkey farms up in Maine. It is kind of frustratin' though, don't you think, Septimus? We are still not thirty and could live another hundred years what with the new arteries they are making out of Nucrolon and the new tickers they are replacing for the old ones."
"Let us look over the model again," I says. "You are just moody today, D'Ambrosia."
It still looks like it would work to me. It is just a rocket ship pointed toward terra firma instead of the other way, and has an auger fixed in place at the nose. It is about twenty feet long and four feet wide and made out of the strongest metal known to modern science, cryptoplutonite. It won't heat up or break off and it will start spinning around as soon as we cut loose with the tail blasts.
"How much time do we need and how much energy for only four thousand kilometers?" I asks Zahooli. "We got enough stored up to go seventy million miles into space? We'll cross that bridge when we get to the river."
"You mean the Styx?"
"That is one thing I will not believe," I sniff. "We will never find Attila the Hun or Hitler down there. Or Beelzebub."
All at once we hear a big rumbling noise and the plexidomed house we are in shakes and rattles and we are knocked out of our chairs and deposited on the seats of our corylon rompers. The viso-screen blacks out, I get to all fours and ask, "You think the Nougatines have gone to war again, D'Ambrosia?"
"It was not mice," Zahooli gulps. "It is either a hydroradium plant backfired or a good old-fashioned earthquake."
After a while we have the viso-screen working. The face of Coordinator Five appears. He says the worst earthquake in five centuries has happened. There is a crack in the real estate of Department X6 near the Rockies that makes the Grand Canyon look like a kid just scraped a stick through some mud. Infra-Red Cross units, he says, are rocketing to the area.
"There might be somethin' goin' on inside this earth," I says. "If you don't poke a hole in a baked potato its busts right open from heat generated inside. Our project, D'Ambrosia, seems even more expedient than ever."
"That is a new word for 'insane' I must look up," Zahooli says.
Professor Apsox Zalpha comes out with a statement the next morning. He says the quake confirms his theory that the inside of the Earth is as hot as a Venutian calypso number, and that gases are being generated by the heat and that we haven't volcanoes enough on the surface to allow them to escape.
Exmud R. Zmorro comes and asks me if I have an opinion.
"Ha," I laugh. "I have many on file in the Neuropsychiatorium. Just go and take your pick. However, I will give you one ad lib and sub rosa. There is more downstairs than Professor Zalpha dreams about. Who is he to say there is no civilization in inner space as well as outer? How do we know that there is not a globe inside a globe with some kind of space or atmosphere in between?"
Exmud R. Zmorro says thanks and leaves in quite a hurry. I snap off the gadget and head for my rocket jeep, and fifteen seconds later I am walking into the factory where a hundred citizens are already at work on the inner spaceship. It is listing a little to port from the quake but the head mech says it will be all straightened out in a few hours. It is just a skeleton ship at the moment with the auger already in place and the point about three feet into the ground.
D'Ambrosia Zahooli comes in and says he has been to see Commander Bizmuth Aquinox. "He will give just enough of the atom pile for seventy million miles," he says. "And only enough superhydrogenerated radium to push us twenty million miles, Sep. I think we should write to Number One. I explained to the space brass that we have got to come up again after going down and have to reverse the blast tubes. It is radium we have to have to make the return trip. I says a half a pound would do it. You know what I think? I bet they don't believe we'll ever git back. And was their laughs dirty!"
"Skeptics have lived since the beginnin' of time," I scoff. "They laughed at Leonardo da Vinci, Columbus, Edison, a guy named Durante. Even the guy who first sat down at a pianer. We will take what we can git, pal, and then come back and laugh at them."
"I wish you was more convincin'," D'Ambrosia says. "I have claustrophobia and would hate to git stuck in an over-sized fountain pen halfway to the middle of this earth."
"Hand me those plans," I says sharply. "And stop scarin' me."
Three months later we have it made. Technicians come from four planets to look at the Magnificent Mole. The area is alive with members of the Interplanetary Press, the Cosmic News Bureau, and the Universe Feature Service. Two perspiring citizens arrive and tear up two insurance policies right in front of my eyes. An old buddy of mine in the war against the Nougatines says he wants to go with me. His name is Axitope Wurpz. He has been flying cargo between Earth and Parsnipia and says he is quite unable to explain certain expense items in his book. A Parsnipian D.A. is trying to serve him a subpoena.
"You are in, Axie," I says. "A crew of three is enough as that is about all the oxygen we can store up. Meet D'Ambrosia Zahooli."
"Why is he wearing a mask?" Wurpz quips.
"You are as funny as a plutonium crutch," Zahooli says.
"No hard feelin's," Wurpz says, and takes a small flask out of his pocket. "We will drink to Operation Earthworm."
As might have been expected, we run into some snags. The Euthanasia Society serve us with papers as they maintain nobody can commit suicide in the year 2022 without permission from the Board. Gulflex and other oil companies protest to Number One as they say we might open up a hole that will spill all the petroleum out of the earth all at once, so fast they couldn't refine it. A spark could ignite it and set the globe on fire like it was a brandied Christmas pudding. But then another earthquake shakes Earth from the rice fields of China to the llamas in Peru just when it looks as if we were about to be tossed into an outer space pokey.
The seismologists get together and agree that they can't possibly figure out the depth of the focus and state that the long waves have to pass through the epicenter or some such spot underground. Anyway, all the brass agrees that something is going on in inner space not according to Hoyle or Euclid or anybody else and that we three characters might just hit on something of scientific value.
The Magnificent Mole is built mostly of titanium, a metal which is only about half as heavy as steel and twice as rugged. It is not quite as big in diameter as the auger, for if it was any Martian moron knows we would scrape our sides away before we got down three miles. We store concentrated chow to last six months and get the acceleration couches ready. We are to blast down at eighteen point oh-four hours, Friday, May 26th, 2022. Today is Wednesday. The big space brass, the fourteenth estate haunt the spot marked X.
We get it both barrels from the jokers carrying press cards. They call it Operation Upside Down. At last three characters were really going to dig a hole and pull it in after them. Three hours before Dig-day, Exmud R. Zmorro interviews us. We are televised around the orbit.
"Laying all joking aside, Spink," the news analyst says dolefully, "you don't expect this to work."
"Of courst!" I says emphatically. "You forget the first man to reach New Mu was a Spink. A Spink helped Columbus wade ashore in the West Indies. The first man to invent a road-map all citizens could unfold and understand was a Spink."
Zmorro turns to Zahooli and Wurpz. "Don't ask us anythin'!" they yelp in unison. "You would only git a silly answer."
"A world inside of a world you said once, Spink. Ha--"
"Is that impossible? You have seen those ancient sailing ships built inside of a bottle, Mr. Zmorro," I says.
He paws at his dome and takes a hyperbenzadrine tablet. "Well, thank you, Septimus Spink. And have a good trip."
It is Friday. We climb up the ladder and into the Magnificent Mole. "Check everything," I says to Wurpz. "You are the sub-strata astrogator."
"Rogeria. I hope this worm can turn," Wurpz says.
* * * * *
Zahooli checks the instruments. We don't put on space suits, but have a pressure chamber built in to insure against the bends. I wave good-bye to the citizens outside and close the door.
"I have got to git out," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says and heads for the door. "I forgot somethin'."
"Huh?"
"I forgot to resign," he says, and I pull a disintegrator Betsy on him and tell him to hop back to the controls.
"Awright, we have computed the masses of fuel we need. Stand by for the takeoff--er, takedown. Eight seconds. Seven--Six--Five--Four--"
"I know now my mother raised one idiot," Zahooli says.
"Three seconds--two seconds--one second!" I go on. "Awright, unload the pile in one and three tubes! Then when we have gone about five hundred miles, give us the radium push."
Whir-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-o-o-om! The Mole shudders like a citizen looking at his income tax bite and then starts boring. There is a big bright light all around us, changing color every second, then there is a sound like all the pneumatomic drills in all the universe is biting through a thousand four-inch layers of titanium plate. And with it is a rumble of thunder from all the electric storms since the snake bit Cleopatra. In less than five seconds we turn on the oxygen just in case, and I jump to the instrument panel and look at the arrow on a dial.
"Hey," I yell, "we are makin' a thousand miles per hour through the ground!"
"Don't look through the ports," Wurpz says. "In passin' I saw an angleworm three times the size of a firehose, and a beetle big enough to saddle."
"Git into the compression chamber quick," I says to him. "You are gettin' hallucinations."
I turn on the air conditioning as it gets as humid in the Mole as in the Amazon jungle during the dog days. The boring inner spaceship starts screeching like a banshee.
I look at the instrument panel again and see we are close to being seven thousand miles down, and all at once the gauges show we are out of energy. I look out the port and see a fish staring in at me, and a crab with eyes like two poached eggs swimming in ketchup.
Then we are going through dirt again and all of a sudden we come out of it and I see a city below us all lit up and the buildings are made of stuff that looks like jade run through with streaks of black.
The Mole drops down about a thousand more feet and then hits the floor of the subterranean city and we land like a fountain pen with its point slammed into the top of a lump of clay. Bo-o-o-o-i-ing! We twang like a plucked harp string for nearly five minutes and I hit my noggin against the pilot's seat.
When I pick up my marbles I look around for either an Elysium field or a slag heap but instead a creep is staring down at me. He looks part human and part beetle and has a face the color of the meat of an avocado. His head is shaped like a pear standing on its stem and has two eyes spaced about six inches apart and they are as friendly as those of a spitting cobra irked by hives. He is about four feet tall and has two pairs of arms. I guess I am still a little delirious or I would not have told the thing he would make a swell paper hanger.
The subterranean creep throws a fit and belts me with four fists. "Dummkopf!" it says, and then I really get scared as he has got a lop of hair falling down over one eye and has a black mustache the size of a Venutian four centra stamp over his mouth which is like that of a pouting goldfish.
I get to my feet and grab for a railing, and I see Wurpz and Zahooli held by two other monsters that look more like beetles than the one standing beside me.
"Zo!" the creep with the mustache says. "It is a surprise I talk Universa? We have radar and telepathometers that give us everything that is said in the upper world."
I think back and try not to. In the hermetically sealed cylinder back upstairs among my Americana Spink I have some photographs, Circa 1945. One is of a citizen of old Nazi Germany who was supposed to have cremated himself in a bunker. Papers there record that my forebear, Cyril Spink, had his doubts at the time.
"I am the Neofeuhrer, Earthman," this creep says. "I will conquer the universe."
"Look," I says, pawing beads of sweat as big as the creep's eyes from my brow, "have you been testin' atom bombs and worse down here?"
"Jar."
"There, I knew Professor Zalpha was off the beam," I yelp at Wurpz. "This is what is causin' the earthquakes."
"Come, schwine," the creep says. "I will show you something. The tomb of my ancestor. Then to the museum to show you how he arrived in Subterro in the year 1945. This is the city of Adolfus. Mach schnell! Heil Hitler. I am Agrodyte Hitler, grandson of the Liberator."
The short hairs on the back of my neck start crawling down my spine. We leave the Mole and walk along a big square paved with a mineral we never saw upstairs. Thousands of inhabitants of Subterro hiss at us and click their long black fingers. We walk up a long flight of steps and come to a cadaver memorial and on the front there are big letters and numerals in what looks like bloodstone that says: ADOLPH HITLER. 1981.
"Jar, Earthmen, mortal enemies of Subterro's hero, you thought he did not escape, hah? Come, we go to the museum."
We do. In a glass case is an antique U-boat. "I can't believe it," I says to Zahooli.
"Neither do I. We never took off. They have us locked up in the booby hatch in Metropolita. We went nuts."
"He escaped in a submarine, bringing three of Nazi Germany's smartest scientists with him. He brought plans showing us he could split the atom. He brought working models." The creep laughs mockingly. "We have certain elements down here also. Puranium, better than your uranium. And pitchblende Plus Nine. It will power our fleet of submarines that will conquer Earth. It is nearly der tag! We will leave through the underground river that our benefactor found three miles below the surface of the ocean near Brazil. It spirals down through this earth and empties into Lake Schicklegruber eighty miles from here."
"And Hitler took one of those Subterro dames as a mate, huh," I says. "It figures. He was not human himself."
I get another cuffing around but I am too punchy already to feel anything. The next thing I know I am in the Subterro clink with Wurpz and Zahooli. D'Ambrosia says maybe we will get released from the strait jackets soon and get shock treatments and find ourselves back in Metropolita in our favorite night spot.
"We have to be dreamin' this," I keep telling myself. The guard looks in at us and he has little slanting eyes.
"How did Jap beetles get here?" I ask Wurpz. I shiver. I think of all the Subterro subs pouring out of a hole under Brazil and sinking all Earthian merchant marines, and shooting guided missiles that will land all over the U.S. They could have rays that would reach up over a million miles and wash up space traffic.
Then we get another jolt. They bring us our chow and say it is angleworm and hellgrammite porridge as that is what the Subterro denizens live on mostly. There is a salad made out of what looks like skunk cabbage leaves. We found out later that Hitler's brain trust had made an artificial sun for the Subterrors and they had been given greens for the first time and increased in size over a hundred per cent.
"We have got to escape," I says to my pals.
"That is easy," Zahooli sniffs. "First we have to break through the walls here, get to the Mole which can't never move again, and then fight off maybe six million creeps. We would git reduced to cinders by ray Betsys the minute we hit the street."
I sigh deeply and reach into my knapsack. I find some lamb stew and tapioca pudding capsules and split them with Zahooli and Wurpz. Then I come up with a little box and glance at the label. It says, URGOXA'S INSECT POWDER--Contains Radiatol.
I get up nonchalantly and call the guard to the barred window. Beetlehead sticks his face in close and asks what I want. I empty some of the powder into the palm of my hand and then blow it into his face. The Subterro sentry's eyes cross. His face turns as pale as milk and he collapses like a camp stool.
"Eureka!" I yelp. "We are in business, pals."
I hide the box of bug powder when I hear two other creeps come running. They start yakking in Universa and in bug language both. Agrodyte Hitler appears and looks in at us.
"What happened, Great One?" I ask very politely.
"We will perform an autopsy," Hitler's grandson says, and turns to another beetlehead. "Open the door," he says. "I am showing my guests something before we exterminate them. Too bad about Voklogoo. Most likely a coronary entomothrombosis. Achtung! Raus mitt!"
"It means get the lead out in old Germanic literature," I says to Wurpz and Zahooli.
"It is curtains," D'Ambrosia gulps. "In about five minutes we will be residue."
The Neofeuhrer is like all egomaniacs before him. He wants to brag. We get into a Subterro Jetjeep and drive about twenty miles through the underground countryside to the entrance to a cave guarded by some extra tall Subterrors. Hitler the Third leads us into the spelunker's nightmare and we finally come to a big metal door about eighty feet long and twenty feet high.
Agrodyte pushes a button and the steel door lifts. Then we walk up a flight of steps to the top of a dam and take a gander at a fleet of submarines that makes Earthian pig-boats look like they belonged in antique shops.
"We will take you for a ride in one," the dictator of Subterro says. "After that I will turn you over to the executioner."
"We need lawyers," Wurpz says.
We cross a thin gangplank and enter the sub. The lights in it are indirect and are purplish green. Hitler Number Three shows us the telepathic machine, the radar, and the viso-screen that pictures everything going on upstairs on Earth, and on Mars, Jupiter and all other planets. There are four other beetleheads on the sub and they carry disintegrators.
"These Subterro U-boats," our genial host brags, "can go as fast in reverse as full speed ahead, as the situation warrants. They are alive with guided missiles no larger than this flashlight I have here, but one would blow up your Metropolita and leave hardly an ash."
He looks at me, and then goes on: "We will proceed to the lock that will raise us to the underground river and cruise along its course for a few hundred miles. It is the treat I should accord such distinguished visitors from the outside of Earth, nein?"
The skipper of the Subterro sub pulls a switch and there is a noise like three contented cats purring. The metal fish slides along the surface of the underground lake and comes to a hole in a big rock ledge.
We see all this through a monitor which registers the scenery outside the sub within a radius of three miles. The sub slides into the side of the rock, and then is lifted up to the underground river that winds and winds upward like a corkscrew to the outlet under Brazil. Every once in a while a blast of air that smells like a dentist's office goes through the sub from bow to stern and I ask why.
"There is such terrific potency to the power we use from our puranium," Hitler Number Three says, "that we purify the air every few seconds with formula XYB and Three-fifth. The basis of the gas is galena."
I nudge Wurpz and Zahooli as the Neofeuhrer goes over to converse with his crew. "It is our big chance," I whisper. "You watch how they run this tub for the next few minutes. Then when I cough three times you be ready. I do not know how much powder it will take to knock off the big bug as he is half human. Once I blow this insect powder at the same time as the purifying blast is to take place, you two be ready to jump Agrodyte. I noticed that a small purple light flashes on over the monitor just before that stuff turns loose. It is a warning so the beetleheads can take deep breaths."
"Sep," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I take back all the insults of the past five hours. Shake."
"I am doin' that already," I says. "We have to work fast while we are in the underground river."
We wait. The Neofeuhrer comes walking back to where we are sitting. The purple light flashes on, and I count to three. Just as the blast of air loaded with XYB plus cuts loose I throw all the bug powder left in the box into the current. Hitler Number Three breathes in a big gob of it and buckles a little at the knees.
"Grab him!" I screech. "Don't let him yank that disintegrator loose. Hit him with anything you see, pals!"
I see the other beetleheads collapse like they had been hit with bulldozers and I know now that insecticide is more dangerous in Subterro than all the radioactivity harnessed up on six planets.
Agrodyte Hitler, however, has some moxey left in him as he has two of his hands around Wurpz's throat, the third around Zahooli's leg and is reaching for a ray Betsy with his fourth. He grabs the disintegrator just as I belt him over his ugly noggin with a wrench about two feet long and which was certainly not made of aluminum or balsa wood.
"Himmel!" the Neofeuhrer gulps. "Ach du lebensraum!" He has to be hit once more which is enough and we tie him up with rope that looks like it was made out of plutonium filaments.
"Well," I says. "We have a sub from Subterro. Wurpz, you just sit there at the controls and make sure that needle on the big dial don't move as I am sure this creep has it on robot so that this tub will automatically follow the course of the river."
"We are sure takin' a powder," D'Ambrosia yelps. "Look at the monitor!"
We see fish gaping at us from the screen that even Earth citizens with delirium tremens never saw, and I look quite anxiously at the instrument panel.
"A thousand miles per and we are climbin'," I says. "I am glad this Hitler used old Germanic on his subs, and that I majored in it once. I--er--I am gettin' arthritis all at once! The bends! Uh--er--look, peel them suits off the other creeps and fast, Zahooli, as I bet they can be inflated and made into compression chambers. They have got connections that plug into something."
We pull on the suits which were too big for the beetleheads and for a good reason. More bends than there are in the Ohio River are with us before we plug into the right socket. The suits bulge out until our feet almost leave the floor. I grin through my helmet at Wurpz.
The sub keeps purring and purring. The altimeter registers four thousand feet. It is a caution, an altimeter in a sub. Two hours later we shoot out through a hole deep under the coast of Brazil and I know we are in the ocean as the monitor shows some old wrecked ships about three miles from us. We disconnect the Subterro anti-bends kimonos and peel them off. Agrodyte Hitler is moving two of his arms when we climb toward the surface.
"Hah, we will make a sucker out of history," I says to Wurpz. "And wait until we show this creep to Professor Zalpha and Exmud R. Zmorro."
We come to the surface and contact an Earthian Franco-Austro atomic luxury liner. The skipper's pan registers on the viso-screen. "This is Septimus Spink," I says. "Commander of Inner Spaceship Magnificent Mole. I have come from the center of Earth with a captured Subterro submarine and Agrodyte Hitler, the Neofeuhrer. Over and out."
The universe goes into a cosmic dither when we slide into a berth in Hampton Rhodus. Thousands of citizens hail us as we ride to Metropolita in a Supercaddijet. Behind us in a truck trailer made mostly of transparent duralucite is our captive, the descendant of Adolph Hitler and three dead Subterro beetle people.
"Well, you won't give up so easy on a Spink from now on," I says to Zahooli. "We are heroes and will get medals. First thing we have to do, though," I says to Coordinator One sitting in the jet sedan with us, "is to take care of the hole Earth has in its head. All we have to do is drop that new bomb down the tunnel we made and it will wash up all those subs that are left and most likely cause a flood that will inundate Subterro. What do you think?"
The brass is still tongue-tied. "One thing I must do and that is see that a certain insecticide manufacturer gets a plug on Interplanetary TV," I continue. "Ha, we took the bugs out of this planet. It should work quite smooth from now on."
"I still believe in reincarnation," D'Ambrosia Zahooli says. "I have the darndest feeling I've been through almost as big nightmares with you before, Sep."
* * * * *
Interplanetary Press, Circa 2022, Junius XXIV--Professor Apsox Zalpha, eminent professor of cosmogony, and Exmud R. Zmorro, leading news analyst of seven worlds, have entered the Metropolita Neuropsychiatorium for a routine checkup. They emphatically denied that it was connected in any way with a lecture given recently by Septimus Spink, first man to explore inner space, at the Celestial Cow Palace in San Francisco. Both men expect to remain for two weeks. "Of course there is nothing wrong with either of us," Professor Zalpha told your correspondent. "But if you see a beetle, please do not step on it. It could be somebody's mother."
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER
by Robert Andrew Arthur
The world would beat a path to Elmer's door--but he had to go carry the door along with him!
It was the darnedest traffic jam I'd ever seen in White Plains. For two blocks ahead of me, Main Street was gutter to gutter with stalled cars, trucks and buses.
If I hadn't been in such a hurry to get back to the shop, I might have paid more attention. I might have noticed nobody was leaning on his horn. Or that at least a quarter of the drivers were out peering under their hoods.
But at the time it didn't register. I gave the tie-up a passing glance and was turning up the side street toward Biltom Electronics--Bill-Tom, get it?--when I saw Marge threading her way to the curb. She was leading a small blonde girl of about eight, who clutched a child-size hatbox in her hand. Marge was hot and exasperated, but small fry was as cool and composed as a vanilla cone.
I waited. Even flushed and disheveled, Marge is a treat to look at. She is tall and slender, with brown eyes that match her hair, a smile that first crinkles around her eyes, then sneaks down and becomes a full-fledged grin--
But I'm getting off the subject.
"Honestly, Bill!" Marge said as she saw me. "The traffic nowadays! We've been tied up for fifteen minutes. I finally decided to get off the bus and walk, even though it is about a hundred in the shade."
"Come along to the shop," I suggested. "The reception room is air-conditioned and you can watch the world's first baseball game telecast in color. The Giants versus the Dodgers, Carl Erskine pitching."
Marge brightened. "That'll be more fun than shopping, won't it, Doreen?" she asked, looking down at the kid. "Bill, this is Doreen. She lives across the street from me. Her mother's at the dentist and I said I'd look after her for the day."
"Hello, Doreen," I said. "What have you in the hatbox? Doll clothes?"
Doreen gave me a look of faint disgust. "No," she piped, in a high treble. "An unhappy genii."
"An unhappy--" I did a double take. "Oh, an unhappy genii? Maybe he's unhappy because you won't let him out, ha ha." Even to myself, I sounded idiotic.
Doreen looked at me pityingly. "It's not a he, it's a thing. Elmer made it."
I knew when I was losing, so I quit.
* * * * *
I hurried Marge and Doreen along toward our little two-story building. Once we got into the air-conditioned reception room, Marge sank down gratefully onto the settee and I switched on the television set with the big 24-inch tube Tom had built.
Biltom Electronics makes TV components, computer parts, things like that. Tom Kennedy is the brains. Me, Bill Rawlins, I do the legwork, and tend to the business details.
"It's uncanny the way all those cars suddenly stopped when our bus broke down," Marge said as we waited for the picture to come on. "Any day now this civilization of ours will get so complicated a bus breaking down someplace will bring the whole thing to a halt. Then where will we be?"
"Elmer says silly-zation is doomed!" Doreen put in happily.
The way she rolled the word out made me stare at her.
Marge only nodded. "That's what Elmer says, all right," she agreed, a trifle grim.
"Why does Elmer say silly-zation is doomed?" I asked Doreen.
"Because it's getting hotter." The kid gave it to me straight. "All the ice at the North Pole is gonna melt. The ocean is gonna rise two hundred feet. Then everybody who doesn't live on a hill is gonna be drownded. That's what Elmer says and Elmer isn't ever wrong."
Doreen they called her! Why not Cassandra? The stuff kids spout these days!
I gave her a foolish grin. I wanted Marge to get the idea I was really a family man at heart. "That's very interesting, Doreen. Now look, there's the baseball game. Let's watch, shall we?"
We weren't very late after all. It was the top half of the second inning, the score one to one, Erskine in trouble with two men on and only one down. The colors were beautiful. Marge and I were just settling back to watch when Doreen wrinkled her nose.
"I saw that game yesterday!" she announced.
"You couldn't have, sweetheart," I told her. "Because it's only being played today. The world's first ball game ever broadcast in color."
"There was a game on Elmer's TV," Doreen insisted. "The picture was bigger and the colors prettier, too."
"Absolutely impossible." I was a little sore. I hate kids who tell fibs. "There never was a game broadcast in color before. And, anyway, you won't find a color tube this big any place outside of a laboratory."
"But it's true, Bill." Marge looked at me, wide-eyed. "Elmer only has a little seven-inch black and white set his uncle gave him. But he's rigged up some kind of lens in front of it, and it projects a big color picture on a white screen."
I saw that she was serious. My eyes bugged slightly. "Listen," I said, "who is this Elmer character? I want to meet him!"
"He's my cousin from South America," Doreen answered. "He thinks grownups are stupid." She turned to Marge. "I have to go to the bathroom," she said primly.
"Through that door." Marge pointed.
Doreen trotted out, clutching her hat box.
* * * * *
"Elmer thinks grownups are stupid?" I howled. "Listen, how old is this character who says silly-zation is doomed and can convert a black and white broadcast into color?"
"He's thirteen," Marge told me. I goggled at her. "Thirteen," she repeated. "His father is some South American scientist. His mother died ten years ago."
I sat down beside her. I lit a cigarette. My hands were shaking. "Tell me about him. All about him."
"Why, I don't know very much," Marge said. "Last year Elmer was sick, some tropic disease. His father sent him up here to recuperate. Now Alice--that's his aunt, Doreen's mother--is at her wits' end, he makes her so nervous."
I lit another cigarette before I realized I already had one. "And he invents things? A boy genius? Young Tom Edison and all that?"
Marge frowned. "I suppose you could say that," she conceded. "He has the garage full of stuff he's made or bought with the allowance his father sends him. And if you come within ten feet of it without permission, you get an electric shock right out of thin air. But that's only part of it. It--" she gave a helpless gesture--"it's Elmer's effect on everybody. Everybody over fifteen, that is. He sits there, a little, dark, squinched-up kid wearing thick glasses and talking about how climatic changes inside fifty years will flood half the world, cause the collapse of civilization--"
"Wait a minute!" I cut in. "Scientists seem to think that's possible in a few thousand years. Not fifty."
"Elmer says fifty," Marge stated flatly. "From the way he talks, I suspect he's figured out a way to speed things up and is going to try it some day just to see if it works. Meanwhile he fools around out there in the garage, sneering about the billions of dollars spent to develop color TV. He says his lens will turn any ordinary broadcast into color for about twenty-five dollars. He says it's typical of the muddled thinking of our so-called scientists--I'm quoting now--to do everything backward and overlook fundamental principles."
"Bro-ther!" I said.
Doreen came trotting back in then, with her hat box. "I'm tired of that game," she said, giving the TV set a bored glance. And as she said it the tube went dark. The sound cut off.
"Damn!" I swore. "Must be a power failure!" I grabbed the phone and jiggled the hook. No dice. The phone was dead, too.
"You're funny," Doreen giggled. "It's just the unhappy genii. See?"
She flicked over the catch on the hatbox.
And the picture came back on. The sound started up. "--swings and misses for strike two!" The air conditioner began to hum.
Marge and I stared. Mouths open. Wide.
* * * * *
"You did that, Doreen?" I asked it very carefully. "You made the television stop and start again?"
"The unhappy genii did," Doreen told me. "Like this." She flicked the catch back. The TV picture blacked out. The sound stopped in the middle of a word. The air conditioner whispered into silence.
Then she flipped the catch the other way.
"--fouls the second ball into the screen," the announcer said. Picture okay. Air conditioner operating. Everything normal except my pulse and respiration.
"Doreen, sweetheart--" I took a step toward her--"what's in that box? What is an unhappy genii?"
"Not unhappy." You know how scornful an eight-year-old can be? Well, she was. "Unhap-pen. It makes things unhappen. Anything that works by electracity, it stops. Elmer calls it his unhappen genii. Just for fun."
"Oh, now I get it," I said brightly. "It makes electricity not work--unhappen. Like television sets and air conditioners and automobiles and bus engines."
Doreen giggled.
Marge sat bolt upright. "Doreen! You caused that traffic jam? You and that--that gadget of Elmer's?"
Doreen nodded. "It made all the automobile engines stop, just like Elmer said. Elmer's never wrong."
Marge looked at me. I looked at Marge.
"A field of some kind," I said. "A field that prevents an electric current from flowing. Meaning no combustion motor using an electric spark can operate. No electric motors. No telephones. No radio or TV."
"Is that important?" Marge asked.
"Important?" I yelled. "Think of the possibilities just as a weapon! You could blank out a whole nation's transportation, its communications, its industry--"
I got hold of myself. I smiled my best I-love-children smile. "Doreen," I said, "let me look at Elmer's unhappen genii."
The kid clutched the box.
"Elmer told me not to let anybody look at it. He said he'd statuefy me if I did. He said nobody would understand it anyway. He said he might show it to Mr. Einstein, but not anybody else."
"That's Elmer, all right," Marge muttered.
I found myself breathing hard. I edged toward Doreen and put my hand on the hatbox. "Just one quick look, Doreen," I said. "No one will ever know."
She didn't answer. Just pulled the box away.
I pulled it back.
She pulled.
I pulled.
"Bill--" Marge called warningly. Too late. The lid of the hatbox came off in my hands.
* * * * *
There was a bright flash, the smell of insulation burning, and the unhappen genii fell out and scattered all over the floor.
Doreen looked smug. "Now Elmer will be angry at you. Maybe he'll disintegrate you. Or paralalize you and statuefy you. Forever."
"He might at that, Bill," Marge shuddered. "I wouldn't put anything past him."
I wasn't listening. I was scrambling after the mess of tubes, condensers and power packs scattered over the rug. Some of them were still wired together, but most of them had broken loose. Elmer was certainly one heck of a sloppy workman. Hadn't even soldered the connections. Just twisted the wires together.
I looked at the stuff in my hands. It made as much sense as a radio run over by a truck.
"We'll take it back to Elmer," I told Doreen, speaking very carefully. "I'll give him lots of money to build another. He can come down here and use our shop. We have lots of nice equipment he'd like."
Doreen tossed her head. "I don't think he'll wanta. He'll be mad at you. Anyway, Elmer is busy working on aggravation now."
"That's for sure!" Marge said in heartfelt tones.
"Aggravation, eh?" I grinned like an idiot. "Well, well! I'll bet he's good at it. But let's go see him right away."
"Bill!" Marge signaled me to one side. "Maybe you'd better not try to see Elmer," she whispered. "I mean, if he can build a thing like this in his garage, maybe he can build a disintegrator or a paralysis ray or something. There's no use taking chances."
"You read too many comics," I laughed it off. "He's only a kid, isn't he? What do you think he is? A superman?"
"Yes," Marge said flatly.
"Look, Marge!" I said in feverish excitement. "I've got to talk to Elmer! I've got to get the rights to that TV color lens and this electricity interruptor and anything else he may have developed!"
Marge kept trying to protest, but I simply grabbed her and Doreen and hustled them out to my car. Doreen lived in a wooded, hilly section a little north of White Plains. I made it in ten minutes.
* * * * *
Marge had said Elmer worked in the garage. I kept going up the driveway, swung sharp around the big house--and slammed on the brakes.
Marge screamed.
We skidded to a stop with our front end hanging over what looked like a bomb crater in the middle of the driveway.
I swallowed my heart down again, while I backed away fast.
We had almost plunged into a hole forty feet across and twenty feet deep in the middle. The hole was perfectly round, like a half section of a grapefruit.
"What's this?" I asked. "Where's the garage?"
"That's where the garage should be." Marge looked dazed. "But it's gone!"
I took another look at that hole scooped out with geometrical precision, and turned to Doreen. "What did you say Elmer was working on?"
"Agg--" she sobbed, "agg--agg--aggravation." She began to bawl in earnest. "Now he's gone. He's mad. He won't ever come back, I betcha."
"That's a fact," I muttered. "He may not have been mad, but he certainly was aggravated. Marge, listen! This is a mystery. We've just got to let it stay a mystery. We don't know anything, understand? The cops will finally decide Elmer blew himself up, and we'll leave it at that. One thing I'm pretty sure about--he's not coming back."
* * * * *
So that's how it was. Tom Kennedy keeps trying and trying to put Elmer's unhappen genii back together again. And every time he fails he takes it out on me because I didn't get to Elmer sooner. But you can see perfectly well he's way off base, trying to make out I could have done a thing to prevent what happened.
Is it my fault if the dumb kid didn't know enough to take the proper precautions when he decided to develop anti-gravitation--and got shot off, garage and all, someplace into outer space?
What do they teach kids nowadays, anyway?
LAST RESORT
by Stephen Bartholomew
The phenomenon of "hysterical strength" at the physical level is well known. Wonder what the equivalent phenomenon at the psychological level might do....
I inflated a rubber balloon and set it adrift. The idea was that in free fall the balloon would drift slowly in the direction of the leak. This was the first thing I did after I had discovered the trouble. I mean it was the first action I took. I had been thinking about it for some time. I had been thinking about what a great distance it was from Pacific Grove, California to Mars, and how I would never breathe the odor of eucalyptus again.
I watched the white balloon floating in the middle of the cabin. Light reflected from a spot on its surface, and it made me think of a Moonglobe I used to keep on my desk when I was in college. I had turned off the fan, and tried to hold my breath to keep from disturbing the air. The balloon drifted slowly a few feet aft, wobbled there for a minute or two, then began to drift forward again. I decided to indulge in the rare luxury of a cigarette. I lighted one, reached over, and popped the balloon. The piece of rubber hung in the air, limp and twisted. I had not expected that trick to work.
The rate of leakage was very low. It had been some thirty-six hours since I'd first noticed it. This was one of those things, of course, that were not supposed to happen in space, and often did. Every precaution had been taken against it. The outer shell of the ship was tough enough to stop medium-velocity meteoroids, and inside the shell was a self-sealing goo, like a tubeless tire. Evidently the goo hadn't worked. Something had got through the hull and made a pinhole leak. In fact the hole was so small that it had taken me nearly thirty-five hours to compute the rate of leakage exactly. But it was big enough, it would do.
I had held the clipboard in my hand for a long time, rechecking the little black numbers on it again and again. Then I had warmed up the transmitter, raised Lunar Base, and reported what had happened. I had not reported before because I had not even been sure I had a leak. There's a normal seepage rate, of course; a certain amount of air will seep right through the molecular structure of the hull. That's what the reserve tanks are for. But I had been out a long time, and there wasn't enough left in the tanks to compensate for this. Not quite.
So I reported to Base. The operator on the other end told me to stand by for instructions. That was for my morale. Then I spent some time thinking about Pacific Grove, and the white house there, and the stand of eucalyptus. Then I blew up the balloon and popped it. As I was watching the piece of rubber hang motionless in the air the receiver began clicking. I waited till it stopped, then pulled out the tape and read it. It said, HAVE YOU INSPECTED HULL? I switched on the send key and tapped out, JUST GOING TO. STAND BY.
I opened the locker and broke out my spacesuit. This was the first time I had put it on since lift-off. Without help, it took me nearly half an hour to get it on and then check it out. I always did hate wearing a spacesuit, it's like a straitjacket. In theory I could have kept it on, plugged directly into the ship's oxygen supply, and ridden all the way back to Earth that way. The trouble with that idea was that the suit wasn't designed for it. You couldn't eat or drink through the helmet, and no one had ever thought up a satisfactory method of removing body wastes. That would be the worst way to go, I thought, poisoned slowly in my own juices.
When I finally did get the thing on, I went out the air lock. If the leak had been bad enough, I would have been able to see the air spurting out through the hole, a miniature geyser. But I found no more than what I expected. I crawled around the entire circumference of the hull and found only a thin silvery haze. The air as it leaked out formed a thin atmosphere around the hull, held there by the faint gravity of the ship's mass. Dust motes in the air, reflecting sunlight, were enough to hide any microscopic geyser spout. Before I re-entered the air lock I looked out into space, in the direction away from the sun. Out there, trailing far away, the air had formed a silver tail, I saw it faintly shimmering in the night. I was going to make a good comet.
I got back inside and stripped off the suit. Then I raised Lunar Base again and tapped out, HAVE INSPECTED HULL. RESULTS NEGATIVE. A few minutes later the reply came back, STAND BY FOR INSTRUCTIONS. For my morale.
* * * * *
I lighted another cigarette and thought about it some more. I looked around at the interior of my expensive, ten-foot coffin. I figured I would last for about another seventy-five hours. Of course I could take cyanide and get it over with. But this wouldn't be such a bad way to go. Within seventy-five hours the last of my reserve tanks would be empty. Then I would just wait for the rest of the air to leak out of the cabin. First I would lose consciousness with anoxia. I'd hardly even notice. Then as the pressure got lower my body fluids would begin to evaporate.
Once I had seen a mummy in a museum, it was some old prospector who had been lying in the Nevada desert for a hundred years or so. I was going to look like him, dried up, yellow, my teeth protruding in a grin, perfectly preserved. With no pilot, the ship would go into a cometary orbit around the sun. Maybe in a hundred years or so someone would come and take me back to a museum on earth.
I began to think about my wife, Sandy. I got out a piece of paper and wrote a long letter to her. I thought, maybe she'll even get to read it some day. Writing gave me something to do. I wrote about the time we had gone up to the Sierras together and slept in a sleeping bag at the edge of a four-thousand foot cliff. And about the times we had gone out in our cabin cruiser, the time we both nearly drowned. And asked about our daughter Wendy, who would be four now. I remembered part of an old poem:
Christ! That my love were in my arms, And I in my bed again!
Writing was all right, until I realized that I had begun feeling sorry for myself, and I was letting it get into the letter. I put the letter aside and wondered what else I could do to kill time. I got out some of the film plates I'd made of the surface of Mars. Of course I had transmitted them all to Lunar Base, but it would have been nice if I could have delivered the original plates. I studied them for a while but didn't find anything I hadn't seen before. Well, I had done my job at least. I had orbited Mars, I had the glory of being the first American to do that. I had dropped the instrument package and transmitted all the data I could get back to Lunar. My only failure would be in not bringing back the ship.
I remembered a conversation I'd had at the last International Space Symposium in Geneva. A buddy of mine and I had taken out one of the Soviet cosmonauts and got him drunk. He was a dignified sort of drunk, a Party member who told long, pointless Russian jokes with an unwavering, serious expression. He sat sideways on the bar stool, holding his glass of vodka between two fingers and staring straight ahead. He said one thing that I had never forgotten.
"Do you know why we are ahead of you in space?" he had said, staring with dignity at the tall blonde at a nearby table. "It is because of your bourgeois sentimentality. You do not like risking men. You build a skyscraper in New York to house some insurance company. Two or three construction workers are maimed or killed on the job. One of your coal mines collapses and fifty men are trapped. Yet, look. You are afraid of losing men in space because of what the people at home might think. So you are too conservative, you avoid risks. So we are ahead of you. We send out a ship with three men aboard when you would risk only one. We are not sentimental, that is all. That is why we are ahead of you." He ordered another drink and stared into the mirror for several minutes, letting us think that over. Then he went on.
"Yes, you are less scientific than we, less logical. Yet that is your advantage, too. You are more alert to the unprecedented, the unpredictable. You are always ready for the Wild Chance, the impossible possibility. You expect the unexpected. You hope for the hopeless. Being sentimental, you have imagination."
His words came back to me. The unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility. That was all that could save me now. But what? Maybe another meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no way out?
I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead, turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. I picked out the smallest meter face. I could just read the numbers on it. I told myself: When I can't read the numbers any more I'll know my vision is blurring from the beginning of anoxia. I thought: When that happens I'll key in the transmitter and tap out, TELL SANDY GOOD-BY.
It would be dramatic anyhow.
A withered mummy in a flying tomb.
* * * * *
The receiver began clicking again. They're still worried about my morale, I thought. I went over and pulled out the tape. It said:
BRONSON HERE. SUGGEST YOU TRY LAST RESORT.
Dr. Bronson was the project director. It was a moment before I realized what he meant. When I did I hesitated for several minutes. Then I shrugged and tapped out, O.K.
I knew what had been happening down there. They had fed all the data I could give them through a computer, and the computer had said no dice. There was no solution to the problem, at least none that a computer could think of with the data available. There was still the Last Resort.
I wondered if cyanide might not be more pleasant. Well, the exects would have scientific interest anyway. The Last Resort was still Top Secret. And highly experimental. It was a new drug with a name a foot long, called LRXD for short. It had come out of the old experiments with lysergic acid and mescalin. I had never heard of its existence until a few hours before lift-off from Lunar Base. Then Dr. Bronson had given me a single ampule of the stuff. He had held it up to the light, looking through it. He said, "This is called LRXD. No one knows exactly what it will do. The lab boys say the 'LR' stands for Last Resort."
What it was supposed to do was increase mental efficiency in human beings. Sometimes it did. They had given it to one volunteer and then shown him an equation which it had taken a computer ten minutes to solve. He wrote down the answer at once, apparently having gone through the entire process in his head instantaneously.
Dr. Bronson told me, "It isn't just a matter of I.Q. It increases the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily the human brain screens out thousands of irrelevant stimuli. You're not aware of your watch ticking, or the fly on the wall, or your own body odor. You just don't notice them. But under LRXD, the brain becomes aware of everything simultaneously. Nothing is screened out. Furthermore, the subject is capable of correlating everything. The human brain becomes as efficient as a Mark 60 computer, with the advantage of imagination and intuition. We don't know how it works yet, or exactly what it does. I hate to say this. But there's even some evidence that the drug increases telepathic ability."
But then again, three of the volunteers had gone insane after taking the drug. Two had died. On some of the others there was no apparent effect at all.
"We don't even know whether the effects are permanent or temporary," Bronson had added.
So now I was supposed to take this Last Resort and then try to think of a way out of my predicament, with my I.Q. boosted up to a thousand or so. It made me think of my college days, when I had stayed up all night on benzedrine, writing term papers. I remembered Bronson's description of one of the volunteers who had gone insane, and shuddered. Well, I had nothing to lose.
"It is what its name implies," Bronson had said. "To be used only in extreme emergency. Only when you have nothing to lose."
I had put the ampule away in the medicine locker and deliberately forgotten about it. Now I got it out again and held it up to the light as Bronson had done. Milky, white. I strapped myself to the acceleration couch, filled a syringe, and swabbed my arm. I looked at the letter I had started and probably would never finish. I rammed the needle in.
* * * * *
The hallucinations began within five minutes. This was normal, Bronson had said. I waited, gripping the armrests of the couch, hoping I would not begin believing in what I saw.
First there was the meter face directly in front of me. It was blue-green. I had never really seen before what color it was. It was like a round, bright flame. I stared at it, becoming hypnotized. Finally I couldn't stand it any more, I reached over and switched off the panel lights. Then the meter face became the blackest darkness I had ever seen, it was no longer a flat disk, but the entrance to a long, black tunnel, endless and narrow. I wanted to enter the tunnel and--Quickly I shifted my gaze. A gas tube rectifier caught my attention. This was like the meter face, only worse. A cloud of intense blue, flickering, shimmering--As I stared at it the cloud seemed to be expanding, growing, forever flickering and shimmering until it became vast, it filled the universe, pulsating with energy, it was a kind of blue I had never seen before.... I had never seen color before. There was a red plastic safety guard over one of the toggle switches. Suddenly it seemed alive, rather the red was alive, the color was no longer part of the object, it was an entity in itself, blazing like flame, liberated from matter, it was a living drop of blood, afire.
I closed my eyes, trying to escape from color, but that was much worse. The colors inside my head blazed out even brighter, more savage.
I turned my head, trying to find something in the cabin to look at that was not bright blue or green or red. With horror I focused on the spacesuit locker. I had left the locker open, the suit hanging on its wire stretcher. I saw immediately that the spacesuit was alive. It stood there motionless, returning my stare, I could not look away from it. I could not move, with fear. Slowly, very slowly, the spacesuit raised an arm and pointed at me. I stared at its single, oval eye, recalling childhood nightmares. Then the suit came out of its locker and began to advance toward me, still pointing its gauntlet at my face. It seemed to take hours to walk across the cabin toward me. I held my breath, waiting. I thought I would scream if it did not reach me, it was taking too long.
Then it did reach me and, bending low above me, wrapped its metallic arms around my body. I turned my face from its mechanical, fiery breath. It began to crush me, I could not breathe, I felt my ribs begin to bend, slowly splinter. My face was pressed against its metallic chest, it was a thin gray wall....
Then there was nothing but the wall itself, dark, thin as a membrane, but impenetrably strong. I was pressing toward it, forcing my way, flattened against it, being crushed slowly between this thin, gray membrane and the tremendous weight of darkness at my back. I knew that if the membrane did not give, if I did not break through at last, I would suffocate and die. In fact I was already dead, the idea came to me with a weight of horror, I twisted, lashing out in total panic. Then the thin gray wall split and gave way, and I was free.
I was still strapped to my crash couch, regarding the instrument panel with absolute calm. Bronson had been right. I was aware of everything. I took in every meter indication simultaneously and correlated their data in my mind, without the help of the computer. I was aware of every sound, the faint hum of the gas tubes and transformers, the whir of the gyros, the reedy buzz of hydraulic actuators, the periodic clicking of the oxygen reclaim unit. I was aware of everything that was happening in the ship, as if it were my own body.
My body. I knew that I would have to explore my new self before investigating the ship. With an effort of will I shut off my new sense impressions, and--looked inside. I sensed the rhythmic muscular action of my heart, the opening and closing of the valves. I felt the surge of blood in all my vessels. I moved my hand to touch the bulkhead, and found that I could count the number of microseconds it took for the nerve impulses to travel from my fingers to my brain. Time seemed to have slowed down, it took an hour for the second hand on the panel clock to make one circuit.
In retrospect I know that this condition of super-awareness must have lasted only for a few minutes. But it seemed then that I had all the time in the world.
I found that I no longer needed to think in words, or even symbols. I could pose myself a problem in, say, four-dimensional vector analysis and see the solution immediately, like a flash of intuition. I had attained total somatic consciousness; I was able to analyze the exact relationship of the drug to the molecular structure of my own protoplasm.
It was then I knew that, although I had recorded no information about Mars that the Russians didn't already have, I was going to bring back home a piece of candy much sweeter.
Wait, now, I told myself. Wait. You have a specific problem to solve. The problem being how to stop that leak in the hull long enough to get home alive. It was a problem of basic survival. I was confident. I knew that if any possible solution to my predicament existed I would find it. I was my own data computer now, but with eyes and ears and imagination. I opened my senses again and concentrated on the flood of information coming at me from the instrument panel. I found that I had total recall, I could remember--simultaneously--every wiring diagram and blueprint of the ship, every screw and transistor and welded seam, that I had ever glanced at. I saw the entire ship as a single entity, a smoothly functioning organism. In a flash I saw a hundred ways of improving its design. But that would have to wait. For a moment I gathered all my psychic energy and concentrated on the single crucial problem of stopping that leak.
And I saw that there was no way to stop the leak. No logical way.
* * * * *
Back at Lunar Base I tried to explain to Bronson what had happened. But I found that it was impossible to explain in words. In fact I no longer entirely understood, myself, what had happened. It was something that had occurred--not altogether on the conscious level. Something about my becoming aware, for a time, of the separate molecules of air within the cabin as extensions of my own body-mind. But I didn't know how to verbalize it.
Dr. Bronson gave me a thorough physical and a preliminary psychological exam. The effects of the drug had worn off, but I felt somehow--changed, I didn't know just how. In fact I wouldn't know until one day two years later, when I dropped a vial of nitroglycerine, and it miraculously did not go off. Still, Bronson pronounced me ready and fit for a long vacation, and in a few days I was headed back toward Pacific Grove.
The vacation lasted for a week. Then it was a Sunday evening, and I was sitting on the front porch of the white house nursing a highball while my wife was upstairs telling Wendy a bedtime story about a princess who kissed a toad, and it turned into a handsome prince.
I was sitting there in the evening light, inhaling the scent of eucalyptus and thinking for the thousandth time about how much better this was than bottled oxygen. Then a rented car pulled into the driveway, and General Bergen got out, wearing civilian clothes. He came up to the porch and sat down next to me. He did not pause for any pleasantries.
"Where's your wife?" he said.
"Upstairs."
"Anyone else in the house?"
"Just my daughter."
He leaned back and lighted a cigarette. I was about to offer him a drink, but he didn't give me a chance.
"Official orders. From now on, you're Top Secret. You're wanted back at the Spacemedic Center in Washington. You have twenty-four hours to straighten out your affairs."
"What?"
He waved a hand. "I wasn't supposed to tell you this yet. Keep it under your hat." I noticed that the fingers holding his cigarette were trembling. "We spent four days going over the hull of your ship--with microscopes. Then we found it. The leak. The hole was still there. It must have been a micrometeor of high density and tremendous velocity. Burned a hole right through the sealing compound--"
Once again I tried to organize words to explain what I had not been able to explain before.
"But the ship's air did stop leaking. I could never have made it back...."
"But the hole was still there!" Then his voice faltered. "Don't you see? My God, what we have yet to learn about psi forces, psychokinesis.... There was nothing to prevent all the air in your ship from leaking out through that pinhole, nothing except--you."
The general leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, looking out into the gathering darkness.
"We've got to find out what this drug does," he said.
"The space program ..." I began.
"Space program?" He pulled on his cigarette. "Hell. What are rockets, compared to this?"
WHERE THERE'S HOPE
By Jerome Bixby
The women had made up their minds, and nothing--repeat, nothing--could change them. But something had to give....
"If you called me here to tell me to have a child," Mary Pornsen said, "you can just forget about it. We girls have made up our minds."
Hugh Farrel, Chief Medical Officer of the Exodus VII, sighed and leaned back in his chair. He looked at Mary's husband. "And you, Ralph," he said. "How do you feel?"
Ralph Pornsen looked at Mary uncomfortably, started to speak and then hesitated.
Hugh Farrel sighed again and closed his eyes. It was that way with all the boys. The wives had the whip hand. If the husbands put up an argument, they'd simply get turned down flat: no sex at all, children or otherwise. The threat, Farrel thought wryly, made the boys softer than watered putty. His own wife, Alice, was one of the ringleaders of the "no babies" movement, and since he had openly declared warfare on the idea, she wouldn't even let him kiss her good-night. (For fear of losing her determination, Farrel liked to think.)
He opened his eyes again to look past the Pornsens, out of the curving port of his office-lab in the Exodus VII's flank, at the scene outside the ship.
At the edge of the clearing he could see Danny Stern and his crew, tiny beneath the cavernous sunbeam-shot overhang of giant leaves. Danny was standing up at the controls of the 'dozer, waving his arms. His crew was struggling to get a log set so he could shove it into place with the 'dozer. They were repairing a break in the barricade--the place where one of New Earth's giant saurians had come stamping and whistling through last night to kill three colonists before it could be blasted out of existence.
It was difficult. Damned difficult. A brand-new world here, all ready to receive the refugees from dying Earth. Or rather, all ready to be made ready, which was the task ahead of the Exodus VII's personnel.
An Earth-like world. Green, warm, fertile--and crawling, leaping, hooting and snarling with ferocious beasts of every variety. Farrel could certainly see the women's point in banding together and refusing to produce children. Something inside a woman keeps her from wanting to bring life into peril--at least, when the peril seems temporary, and security is both remembered and anticipated.
Pornsen said, "I guess I feel just about like Mary does. I--I don't see any reason for having a kid until we get this place ironed out and safe to live in."
"That's going to take time, Ralph." Farrel clasped his hands in front of him and delivered the speech he had delivered so often in the past few weeks. "Ten or twelve years before we really get set up here. We've got to build from the ground up, you know. We'll have to find and mine our metals. Build our machines to build shops to build more machines. There'll be resources that we won't find, and we'll have to learn what this planet has to offer in their stead. Colonizing New Earth isn't simply a matter of landing and throwing together a shining city. I only wish it were.
"Six weeks ago we landed. We haven't yet dared to venture more than a mile from this spot. We've cut down trees and built the barricade and our houses. After protecting ourselves we have to eat. We've planted gardens. We've produced test-tube calves and piglets. The calves are doing fine, but the piglets are dying one by one. We've got to find out why.
"It's going to be a long, long time before we have even a minimum of security, much less luxury. Longer than you think.... So much longer that waiting until the security arrives before having children is out of the question. There are critters out there--" he nodded toward the port and the busy clearing beyond--"that we haven't been able to kill. We've thrown everything we have at them, and they come back for more. We'll have to find out what will kill them--how they differ from those we are able to kill. We are six hundred people and a spaceship, Ralph. We have techniques. That's all. Everything else we've got to dig up out of this planet. We'll need people, Mary; we'll need the children. We're counting on them. They're vital to the plans we've made."
Mary Pornsen said, "Damn the plans. I won't have one. Not now. You've just done a nice job of describing all my reasons. And all the other girls feel the same way."
* * * * *
She looked out the window at the 'dozer and crew. Danny Stern was still waving his arms; the log was almost in place. "George and May Wright were killed last night. So was Farelli. If George and May had had a child, the monster would have trampled it too--it went right through their cabin like cardboard. It isn't fair to bring a baby into--"
Farrel said, "Fair, Mary? Maybe it isn't fair not to have one. Not to bring it into being and give it a chance. Life's always a gamble--"
"It doesn't exist," Mary said. She smiled. "Don't try circumlocution on me, Doc. I'm not religious. I don't believe that spermatozoa and an ovum, if not allowed to cuddle up together, add up to murder."
"That isn't what I meant--"
"You were getting around to it--which means you've run out of good arguments."
"No. I've a few left." Farrel looked at the two stubborn faces: Mary's, pleasant and pretty, but set as steel; Ralph's, uncomfortable, thoughtful, but mirroring his definite willingness to follow his wife's lead.
Farrel cleared his throat. "You know how important it is that this colony be established? You know that, don't you? In twenty years or so the ships will start arriving. Hundreds of them. Because we sent a message back to Earth saying we'd found a habitable planet. Thousands of people from Earth, coming here to the new world we're supposed to get busy and carve out for them. We were selected for that task--first of judging the right planet, then of working it over. Engineers, chemists, agronomists, all of us--we're the task force. We've got to do the job. We've got to test, plant, breed, re-balance, create. There'll be a lot of trial and error. We've got to work out a way of life, so the thousands who will follow can be introduced safely and painlessly into the--well, into the organism. And we'll need new blood for the jobs ahead. We'll need young people--"
Mary said, "A few years one way or the other won't matter much, Doc. Five or six years from now this place will be a lot safer. Then we women will start producing. But not now."
"It won't work that way," Farrel said. "We're none of us kids any longer. I'm fifty-five. Ralph, you're forty-three. I realize that I must be getting old to think of you as young. Mary, you're thirty-seven. We took a long time getting here. Fourteen years. We left an Earth that's dying of radioactive poisoning, and we all got a mild dose of that. The radiation we absorbed in space, little as it was, didn't help any. And that sun up there--" again he nodded at the port--"isn't any help either. Periodically it throws off some pretty damned funny stuff.
"Frankly, we're worried. We don't know whether or not we can have children. Or normal children. We've got to find out. If our genes have been bollixed up, we've got to find out why and how and get to work on it immediately. It may be unpleasant. It may be heart-breaking. But those who will come here in twenty years will have absorbed much more of Earth's radioactivity than we did, and an equal amount of the space stuff, and this sun will be waiting for them.... We'll have to know what we can do for them."
"I'm not a walking laboratory, Doc," Mary said.
"I'm afraid you are, Mary. All of you are."
Mary set her lips and stared out the port.
"It's got to be done, Mary."
She didn't answer.
"It's going to be done."
"Choose someone else," she said.
"That's what they all say."
She said, "I guess this is one thing you doctors and psychologists didn't figure on, Doc."
"Not at first," Farrel said. "But we've given it some thought."
MacGuire had installed the button convenient to Farrel's right hand, just below the level of the desk-top. Farrel pressed it. Ralph and Mary Pornsen slumped in their chairs. The door opened, and Doctor John J. MacGuire and Ted Harris, the Exodus VII's chief psychologist, came in.
* * * * *
When it was over, and the after-play had been allowed to run its course, Farrel told the Pornsens to go into the next room and shower. They came back soon, looking refreshed. Farrel ordered them to get back into their clothes. Under the power of the hypnotic drug which their chairs had injected into them at the touch of the button, they did so. Then he told them to sit down in the chairs again.
MacGuire and Harris had gathered up their equipment, piling it on top of the operating table.
MacGuire smiled. "I'll bet that's the best-monitored, most hygienic sex act ever committed. I think I've about got the space radiations effect licked."
Farrel nodded. "If anything goes wrong, it certainly won't be our fault. But let's face it--the chances are a thousand to one that something will go wrong. We'll just have to wait. And work." He looked at the Pornsens. "They're very much in love, aren't they? And she was receptive to the suggestion--beneath it all, she was burning to have a child, just like the others."
MacGuire wheeled out the operating table, with its load of serums, pressure-hypos and jury-rigged thingamabobs which he was testing on alternate couples. Ted Harris stopped at the door a moment. He said, "I think the suggestions I planted will turn the trick when they find out she's pregnant. They'll come through okay--won't even be too angry."
Farrel sighed. They'd been over it in detail several times, of course, but apparently Harris needed the reassurance as much as he did. He said: "Sure. Now scram so I can go back into my act."
Harris closed the door. Farrel sat down at his desk and studied the pair before him. They looked back contentedly, holding hands, their eyes dull.
Farrel said, "How do you feel?"
Ralph Pornsen said, "I feel fine."
Mary Pornsen said, "Oh, I feel wonderful!"
Deliberately Farrel pressed another button below his desk-top.
The dull eyes cleared instantly.
"Oh, you've given it some thought, Doc?" Mary said sweetly. "And what have you decided?"
"You'll see," Farrel said. "Eventually."
He rose. "That's all for now, kids. I'd like to see you again in one month--for a routine check-up."
Mary nodded and got up. "You'll still have to wait, Doc. Why not admit you're licked?"
Ralph got up too, and looked puzzled.
"Wow," he said. "I'm tired."
"Perhaps just coming here," Farrel said, "discharged some of the tension you've been carrying around."
The Pornsens left.
Farrel brought out some papers from his desk and studied them. Then, from the file drawer, he selected the record of Hugh and Alice Farrel. Alice would be at the perfect time of her menstrual cycle tomorrow....
Farrel flipped his communicator.
"MacGuire," he said. "Tomorrow it's me."
MacGuire chuckled. Farrel could have kicked him. He put his chin in his hands and stared out the port. Danny Stern had the log in place in the barricade. The bulldozer was moving on to a new task. His momentary doubt stilled, Farrel went back to work.
* * * * *
Twenty-one years later, when the ships from Earth began arriving, the log had been replaced by a stone monument erected to the memory of the Exodus VII, which had been cut apart for its valuable steel. Around the monument was a park, and on three sides of the park was a shining town--not really large enough to be called a city--of plastic and stone, for New Earth had no iron ore, only zinc and a little copper. This was often cause for regret.
Still it was a pretty good world. The monster problem had been licked by high-voltage cannon. Now in their third generation since the landing, the monsters kept their distance. And things grew--things good to eat.
And even without steel, the graceful, smoothly-functioning town looked impressive--quite a thing to have been built by a handful of beings with two arms and two legs each.
It hadn't been, entirely. But nobody thought much about that any more. Even the newcomers got used to it. Things change.
THE END
ZERO HOUR
by Alexander Blade
By accident Bobby discovered the rocket was about to be shot to the Moon. Naturally he wanted to go along. But could he smuggle himself aboard?
Dad had already gone when Bobby got up. This disappointed Bobby a little but then he remembered--this was the big day. Naturally Dad would get over to the project early. And at four o'clock-- Bobby shivered deliciously at the thought of it.
He ate his breakfast in silence with Mom across the table drinking a cup of coffee and looking at a fashion catalogue. He was glad she was occupied because he didn't want to talk; not today he didn't. Might spill something secret. Might even let out the big secret. That would be terrible.
Of course, all things were secret at Buffalo Flats. So secret top scientists like Dad didn't even discuss them with wives like Mom. And wives like Mom never asked.
So it was really something to sit there eating breakfast knowing that, today, Dad was going to rocket to the Moon. And with Mom not even knowing the Lunar project was in the works, so naturally not dreaming that he was going with Dad! The thrill was overpowering.
Maybe they would have radio communication after they got there and he would call back and say, Hello, Mom! Guess where I am? On the moon with Dad! And Mom would say, Why, Bobby! Scaring me to death like this! I was looking all over for you. Sounding very angry but not being really angry after all. Because maybe Dad would cut in and say, Yeah, he's right here with me, dear. What do you think of this boy of ours?
Bobby gulped the last of his cereal so he could go outside and wriggle for joy. As he got up from his chair, Mom said, "And what's your plan for today, young man? Davy Crockett or Buck Rogers?"
Bobby had a quick thought--a sudden temptation. Why not give Mom a hint? Why he could even tell her and she still wouldn't know. Then later, after he was gone, she would remember back and say, That boy! When he tells you something he really means it.
Bobby smiled and said, "I think I'll go to the moon today."
Mom smiled too and went back to her fashions. "Well, see to it your fuel mixture is correct."
"I'll check it. And Mom--I might not be home for lunch."
"Where will you be?"
"Oh, I don't know."
"Well, mind your manners and say thank you when you leave."
Mrs. Kendall, still smiling, watched Bobby dash out into the yard. Living on a restricted government area had one compensation at least. You didn't have to worry about your children. Four dozen families, all with offspring, trapped behind ten-foot patrolled fence. Here, nobody worried about their children. They came and went and at noon a mother fed whatever number happened to be in the house at the time. Mrs. Kendall usually drew six or seven. It would be a relief to dodge the chore for one Saturday....
* * * * *
Out in the backyard, Bobby fussed around his space rocket a little: tightening a screw here--hammering in a nail there. Just until he could slip away without Mom noticing his direction.
It wasn't a bad rocket at that, he thought. Six feet long with two seats and a keen instrument panel. But kid stuff of course. After he found the way in through the sewer he hadn't paid any more attention to his own ship.
He could see Mom through the window, back in her book, so he went casually out through the back gate and turned left, kicking at pebbles as he sauntered along and trying to look as though he had no place to go. Had to be careful. Didn't want to bump into any of the other kids today, either.
The way in through the sewer was at a place behind Laboratory B. There was a kind of an alley there that nobody ever walked through and then this round lid you could lift up and look under. And a ladder you could climb down.
Bobby hadn't dared go down at first. But, after thinking about it overnight, his curiosity won out and he went back and ducked down into the lower level. He called it a sewer because of sewers being underground, but this place was clean and had bunches of wires strung in every direction and faint little lights you could see by.
Bobby went further and further every trip he took, never telling anybody because you weren't supposed to talk about things at Buffalo Flats--not even to the other kids.
Then he found the big drome where they were building the rocket. It was so sleek and beautiful and shiny that he just stared at it--up through the grating in the floor that was for air circulation or something.
He didn't know it was the moon rocket at first. Not until he'd gone back several times to peek up at it and then one day two scientists came walking along right in front of his nose.
One of them was Dad.
Bobby almost called out but he caught himself and just listened to them talking. This was the first time his conscience bothered him about going underneath the drome. He thought about it a lot--whether it was the right thing to do. And while he was never able to still his conscience completely, he quieted down by saying he really wasn't doing any harm because he'd never told anybody what he saw.
He learned the rocket was going to the moon by listening to Dad and the other scientists talk when they thought they were alone. And it was funny. Because even there, they spoke in low voices and didn't give too much away.
He had known now for three days that at four o'clock the roof would open and the drome would be turned into a blast-pit and the rocket would shoot out through space to the moon.
That was all he did know for sure. None of the men had said who was going on the first trip to the moon. Nothing had been said on that subject at all, but Bobby knew Dad would go. He would have to. After all, Dad was the second biggest scientist at Buffalo Flats. Second only to Schleimmer himself and Professor Schleimmer was very old and certainly wouldn't make the trip. That left Dad. Dad would just have to go in order to run the rocket. There probably wasn't anybody else smart enough in the whole place.
The idea of going himself had been born the previous day--when he found a larger grating in the floor near the rocket and realized if he was very careful he could climb out of the sewer and duck into the rocket when nobody was looking. Once inside he was pretty sure he'd find a place to hide until blast-off.
All the men would probably be strapped in bunks but if he found a place he could wedge himself in he didn't think he'd get hurt. Then, halfway to the moon he would come out and find Dad and would he be surprised!
At first, thinking about it, he'd been scared but after he realized how proud Dad and Mom would be, he made up his mind.
Now, crouched beside the grating near the ship, he waited while two men--technicians in white overalls--walked by.
One of them said, "Well, whatever happens, she'll make a big splash."
"You said it. Hope the brains know what they're doing."
That made Bobby mad. Who said Dad didn't know what he was doing? Dad was just about the smartest scientist in the world.
After the two men left he waited a long time. He heard voices but no one came in sight. Taking a deep breath, he opened the grating and got out. It was only four steps to the open port of the rocket. There was a little ramp they'd used to roll things in and Bobby's feet touched it but lightly as he jumped into the ship. He found himself in some kind of a storeroom. It would be a good place to hide all right. It was full of aluminum barrels all the same size. He found a space between two rows and sat down and got his breath back. It was very quiet around him. Scary quiet. But he set his lips firmly.
He was going to the moon with Dad.
* * * * *
John Kendall was a little late that night. He kissed his wife and said, "Well, did you see the big sky rocket?"
"How could I miss it, darling? Your supper is in the oven."
"I could use a Martini first."
"Coming right up."
While Myra fixed the drink John lay back in his easy chair and closed his eyes. "We'd hoped to stage a little ceremony at the launching but Washington said no."
"The Russians?"
"The Eastern Coalition. It was a race. That was why it had to be so secret. Washington said, light the fuse and fire the thing."
"Is it still hush-hush?"
"No. Not between us at least. We fired an explosion rocket at the moon. It will hit in about an hour and telescopes will show a big purple spot when our explosives go off and throw dye all over the place."
Myra handed him a dry Martini. "I see. Lots of fun no doubt but what's the purpose? Fourth of July on the moon?"
"Oh, no. If the experiment is a success the next rocket will carry men instead of a bomb."
Myra went to the kitchen to see about supper. John called, "Where's Bobby? In bed I suppose."
Myra didn't hear and John set his drink down and moved toward the bedroom. Maybe he was still awake.
Bobby rolled over. His eyes popped open. "Dad! I thought you went to--"
John Kendall sat down on the edge of the bed and tousled his son's hair. "No, son. It's the old terra firma for me. Did you see the rocket blast?"
"Uh-huh. It was really something. It went to the moon, didn't it?"
"That's right." Kendall smiled and thought. Try to keep a secret from the kids. It just can't be done. "How's your moon rocket coming along, son?"
"Pretty good. Gee, Dad! As long as you didn't go, I'm glad I didn't go either."
"You were planning to make the trip also?"
"Uh-huh. I got into the rocket and was all set but I got to thinking about Mom--how one of us should stay and take care of her in case anything happened."
"Smart thinking, son. Now you get to sleep. I'll have a little time tomorrow. We'll play some ball."
"That will be keen!"
John Kendall smiled as he left the bedroom. Kids were wonderful! Give them a few old boards and a steering wheel and they could build a ship to fly to the moon. What a wonderful dream world they lived in!
Too bad they had to grow out of it.
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK
by Nelson Bond
It's possible that you won't agree with us that Pat Pending's latest adventure is a delightful story--possible IF you haven't been used to laughing in recent years. Blue Book printed more than a dozen of these stories by Nelson Bond about the "greatest inventulator of all time".
Sandy's eyes needed only jet propulsion to become flying saucers. Wasn't Pat wonderful? she beamed, at everyone.
Some joker in the dear, dead days now virtually beyond recall won two-bit immortality by declaring that, "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar."
Which is, of course, Victorian malarkey. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. Or perhaps a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There's a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim it. A fortune! And if you think I'm just talking through my hat, lend an ear ...
Joyce started the whole thing. Or maybe I did when for the umpteenth time I suggested she should marry me. She smiled in a way that showed she didn't disapprove of my persistence, but loosed a salvo of devastating negatives.
"No deal," she crisped decisively. "Know why? No dough!"
"But, sugar," I pleaded, "two can live as cheaply as one--"
"This is true," replied Joyce, "only of guppies. Understand, Don, I don't mind changing my name from Carter to Mallory. In fact, I'd rather like to. But I have no desire whatever to be known to the neighbors as 'that poor little Mrs. Mallory in last year's coat.'
"I'll marry you," she continued firmly, "when, as and if you get a promotion."
Her answer was by no stretch of the imagination a reason for loud cheers, handsprings and cartwheels. Because I'm a Federal employee. The United States Patent Office is my beat. There's one nice thing to be said about working for the bewhiskered old gentleman in the star-spangled stovepipe and striped britches: it's permanent. Once you get your name inscribed on the list of Civil Service employees it takes an act of Congress to blast it off again. And of course I don't have to remind you how long it takes that body of vote-happy windbags to act. Terrapins in treacle are greased lightning by comparison.
But advancement is painfully slow in a department where discharges are unheard of and resignations rare. When I started clerking for this madhouse I was assistant to the assistant Chief Clerk's assistant. Now, ten years later, by dint of mighty effort and a cultivated facility for avoiding Senatorial investigations, I've succeeded in losing only one of those redundant adjectives.
Being my secretary, Joyce certainly realized this. But women have a remarkable ability to separate business and pleasure. So:
"A promotion," she insisted. "Or at least a good, substantial raise."
"In case you don't know it," I told her gloomily, "you are displaying a lamentably vulgar interest in one of life's lesser values. Happiness, not money, should be man's chief goal."
"What good is happiness," demanded Joyce, "if you can't buy money with it?"
"Why hoard lucre?" I sniffed. "You can't take it with you."
"In that case," said Joyce flatly, "I'm not going. There's no use arguing, Don. I've made up my mind--"
At this moment our dreary little impasse was ended by a sudden tumult outside my office. There was a squealing shriek, the shuffle of footsteps, the pounding of fists upon my door. And over all the shrill tones of an old, familiar voice high-pitched in triumph.
"Let me in! I've got to see him instantaceously. This time I've got it; I've absolutely got it!"
Joyce and I gasped, then broke simultaneously for the door as it flew open to reveal a tableau resembling the Laocoon group sans snake and party of the third part. Back to the door and struggling valiantly to defend it stood the receptionist, Miss Thomas. Held briefly but volubly at bay was a red-thatched, buck-toothed individual--and I do mean individual!--with a face like the map of Eire, who stopped wrestling as he saw us, and grinned delightedly.
"Hello, Mr. Mallory," he said. "Hi, Miss Joyce."
"Pat!" we both cried at once. "Pat Pending!"
* * * * *
Miss Thomas, a relative newcomer to our bailiwick, seemed baffled by the warmth of our greeting. She entered the office with our visitor, and as Joyce and I pumphandled him enthusiastically she asked, "You--you know this gentleman, Mr. Mallory?"
"I should say we do!" I chortled. "Pat, you old naughty word! Where on earth have you been hiding lately?"
"Surely you've heard of the great Patrick Pending, Miss Thomas?" asked Joyce.
"Pending?" faltered Miss Thomas. "I seem to have heard the name. Or seen it somewhere--"
Pat beamed upon her companionably. Stepping to my desk, he up-ended the typewriter and pointed to a legend in tiny letters stamped into the frame: Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.--Pat. Pending.
"Here, perhaps?" he suggested. "I invented this. And the airplane, and the automobile, and--oh, ever so many things. You'll find my name inscribed on every one.
"I," he announced modestly, "am Pat Pending--the greatest inventulator of all time."
Miss Thomas stared at me goggle-eyed.
"Is he?" she demanded. "I mean--did he?"
I nodded solemnly.
"Not only those, but a host of other marvels. The bacular clock, the transmatter, the predictograph--"
Miss Thomas turned on Pat a gaze of fawning admiration. "How wonderful!" she breathed.
"Oh, nothing, really," said Pat, wriggling.
"But it is! Most of the things brought here are so absurd. Automatic hat-tippers, self-defrosting galoshes, punching bags that defend themselves--" Disdainfully she indicated the display collection of screwball items we call our Chamber of Horrors. "It's simply marvelous to meet a man who has invented things really worth while."
Honestly, the look in her eyes was sickening. But was Pat nauseated? Not he! The big goon was lapping it up like a famished feline. His simpering smirk stretched from ear to there as he murmured, "Now, Miss Thomas--"
"Sandra, Mr. Pending," she sighed softly. "To you just plain ... Sandy. Please?"
"Well, Sandy--" Pat gulped.
I said disgustedly, "Look, you two--break it up! Love at first sight is wonderful in books, but in a Federal office I'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional, and it may be subversive. Would you mind coming down to earth? Pat, you barged in here squalling about some new invention. Is that correct?"
With an effort Pat wrenched his gaze from his new-found admirer and nodded soberly.
"That's right, Mr. Mallory. And a great one, too. One that will revolutionate the world. Will you give me an applicaceous form, please? I want to file it immediately."
"Not so fast, Pat. You know the routine. What's the nature of this remarkable discovery?"
"You may write it down," said Pat grandiloquently, "as Pat Pending's lightening rod."
I glanced at Joyce, and she at me, then both of us at Pending.
"But, Pat," I exclaimed, "that's ridiculous! Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod two hundred years ago."
"I said lightening," retorted my redheaded friend, "not lightning. My invention doesn't conduct electricity to the ground, but from it." He brandished a slim baton which until then I had assumed to be an ordinary walking-stick. "With this," he claimed, "I can make things weigh as much or as little as I please!"
The eyes of Sandy Thomas needed only jet propulsion to become flying saucers.
"Isn't he wonderful, Mr. Mallory?" she gasped.
But her enthusiasm wasn't contagious. I glowered at Pending coldly.
"Oh, come now, Pat!" I scoffed. "You can't really believe that yourself. After all, there are such things as basic principles. Weight is not a variable factor. And so far as I know, Congress hasn't repealed the Law of Gravity."
Pat sighed regretfully.
"You're always so hard to convince, Mr. Mallory," he complained. "But--oh, well! Take this."
He handed me the baton. I stared at it curiously. It looked rather like a British swagger stick: slim, dainty, well balanced. But the ornamental gadget at its top was not commonplace. It seemed to be a knob or a dial of some kind, divided into segments scored with vernier markings. I gazed at Pending askance.
"Well, Pat? What now?"
"How much do you weigh, Mr. Mallory?"
"One sixty-five," I answered.
"You're sure of that?"
"I'm not. But my bathroom scales appeared to be. This morning. Why?"
"Do you think Miss Joyce could lift you?"
I said thoughtfully, "Well, that's an idea. But I doubt it. She won't even let me try to support her."
"I'm serious, Mr. Mallory. Do you think she could lift you with one hand?"
"Don't be silly! Of course not. Nor could you."
"There's where you're wrong," said Pending firmly. "She can--and will."
He reached forward suddenly and twisted the metal cap on the stick in my hands. As he did so, I loosed a cry of alarm and almost dropped the baton. For instantaneously I experienced a startling, flighty giddiness, a sudden loss of weight that made me feel as if my soles were treading on sponge rubber, my shoulders sprouting wings.
"Hold on to it!" cried Pat. Then to Joyce, "Lift him, Miss Joyce."
Joyce faltered, "How? Like th-this?" and touched a finger to my midriff. Immediately my feet left the floor. I started flailing futilely to trample six inches of ozone back to the solid floorboards. To no avail. With no effort whatever Joyce raised me high above her head until my dazed dome was shedding dandruff on the ceiling!
"Well, Mr. Mallory," said Pat, "do you believe me now?"
"Get me down out of here!" I howled. "You know I can't stand high places!"
"You now weigh less than ten pounds--"
"Never mind the statistics. I feel like a circus balloon. How do I get down again?"
"Turn the knob on the cane," advised Pat, "to your normal weight. Careful, now! Not so fast!"
His warning came too late. I hit the deck with a resounding thud, and the cane came clattering after. Pat retrieved it hurriedly, inspected it to make sure it was not damaged. I glared at him as I picked myself off the floor.
"You might show some interest in me," I grumbled. "I doubt if that stick will need a liniment rubdown tonight. Okay, Pat. You're right and I'm wrong, as you usually are. That modern variation of a witch's broomstick does operate. Only--how?"
"That dial at the top governs weight," explained Pat. "When you turn it--"
"Skip that. I know how it is operated. I want to know what makes it work?"
"Well," explained Pat, "I'm not certain I can make it clear, but it's all tied in with the elemental scientific problems of mass, weight, gravity and electric energy. What is electricity, for example--"
"I used to know," I frowned. "But I forget."
Joyce shook her head sorrowfully.
"Friends," she intoned, "let us all bow our heads. This is a moment of great tragedy. The only man in the world who ever knew what electricity is--and he has forgotten!"
"That's the whole point," agreed Pending. "No one knows what electricity really is. All we know is how to use it. Einstein has demonstrated that the force of gravity and electrical energy are kindred; perhaps different aspects of a common phenomenon. That was my starting point."
"So this rod, which enables you to defy the law of gravity, is electrical?"
"Electricaceous," corrected Pat. "You see, I have transmogrified the polarifity of certain ingredular cellulations. A series of disentrigulated helicosities, activated by hypermagnetation, set up a disruptular wave motion which results in--counter-gravity!"
And there you are! Ninety-nine percent of the time Pat Pending talks like a normal human being. But ask him to explain the mechanism of one of his inventions and linguistic hell breaks loose. He begins jabbering like a schizophrenic parrot reading a Sanskrit dictionary backward! I sighed and surrendered all hope of ever actually learning how his great new discovery worked. I turned my thoughts to more important matters.
"Okay, Pat. We'll dismiss the details as trivial and get down to brass tacks. What is your invention used for?"
"Eh?" said the redhead.
"It's not enough that an idea is practicable," I pointed out. "It must also be practical to be of any value in this frenzied modern era. What good is your invention?"
"What good," demanded Joyce, "is a newborn baby?"
"Don't change the subject," I suggested. "Or come to think of it, maybe you should. At the diaper level, life is just one damp thing after another. But how to turn Pat's brainchild into cold, hard cash--that's the question before the board now.
"Individual flight a la Superman? No dice. I can testify from personal experience that once you get up there you're completely out of control. And I can't see any sense in humans trying to fly with jet flames scorching their base of operations.
"Elevators? Derricks? Building cranes? Possible. But lifting a couple hundred pounds is one thing. Lifting a few tons is a horse of a different color.
"No, Pat," I continued, "I don't see just how--"
Sandy Thomas squeaked suddenly and grasped my arm.
"That's it, Mr. Mallory!" she cried. "That's it!"
"Huh? What's what?"
"You wanted to know how Pat could make money from his invention. You've just answered your own question."
"I have?"
"Horses! Horse racing, to be exact. You've heard of handicaps, haven't you?"
"I'm overwhelmed with them," I nodded wearily. "A secretary who repulses my honorable advances, a receptionist who squeals in my ear--"
"Listen, Mr. Mallory, what's the last thing horses do before they go to the post?"
"Check the tote board," I said promptly, "to find out if I've got any money on them. Horses hate me. They've formed an equine conspiracy to prove to me the ancient adage that a fool and his money are soon parted."
"Wait a minute!" chimed in Joyce thoughtfully. "I know what Sandy means. They weigh in. Is that right?"
"Exactly! The more weight a horse is bearing, the slower it runs. That's the purpose of handicapping. But if a horse that was supposed to be carrying more than a hundred pounds was actually only carrying ten--Well, you see?"
Sandy paused, breathless. I stared at her with a gathering respect.
"Never underestimate the power of a woman," I said, "when it comes to devising new and ingenious methods of perpetrating petty larceny. There's only one small fly in the ointment, so far as I can see. How do we convince some racehorse owner he should become a party to this gentle felony?"
"Oh, you don't have to," smiled Sandy cheerfully. "I'm already convinced."
"You? You own a horse?"
"Yes. Haven't you ever heard of Tapwater?"
"Oh, sure! That drip's running all the time!"
Joyce tossed me a reproving glance.
"This is a matter of gravity, Donald," she stated, "and you keep treating it with levity. Sandy, do you really own Tapwater? He's the colt who won the Monmouth Futurity, isn't he?"
"That's right. And four other starts this season. That's been our big trouble. He shows such promise that the judges have placed him under a terrific weight handicap. To run in next week's Gold Stakes, for instance, he would have to carry 124 pounds. I was hesitant to enter him because of that. But with Pat's new invention--" She turned to Pat, eyes glowing--"he could enter and win!"
Pat said uncertainly, "I don't know. I don't like gambling. And it doesn't seem quite ethical, somehow--"
I asked Sandy, "Suppose he ran carrying 124. What would be the probable odds?"
"High," she replied, "Very high. Perhaps as high as forty to one."
"In that case," I decided, "it's not only ethical, it's a moral obligation. If you're opposed to gambling, Pat, what better way can you think of to put the parimutuels out of business?"
"And besides," Sandy pointed out, "this would be a wonderful opportunity to display your new discovery before an audience of thousands. Well, Pat? What do you say?"
Pat hesitated, caught a glimpse of Sandy's pleading eyes, and was lost.
"Very well," he said. "We'll do it. Mr. Mallory, enter Tapwater in the Gold Stakes. We'll put on the most spectaceous exhibition in the history of gambilizing!"
* * * * *
Thus it was that approximately one week later our piratical little crew was assembled once again, this time in the paddock at Laurel. In case you're an inland aborigine, let me explain that Laurel race track (from the township of the same name) is where horse fanciers from the District of Columbia go to abandon their Capitol and capital on weekends.
We were briefing our jockey--a scrawny youth with a pair of oversized ears--on the use of Pat's lightening rod. Being short on gray matter as well as on stature, he wasn't getting it at all.
"You mean," he said for the third or thirty-third time, "you don't want I should hit the nag with this bat?"
"Heavens, no!" gasped Pat, blanching. "It's much too delicate for that."
"Don't fool yourself, mister. Horses can stand a lot of leather."
"Not the horse, stupid," I said. "The bat. This is the only riding crop of its kind in the world. We don't want it damaged. All you have to do is carry it. We'll do the rest."
"How about setting the dial, Don?" asked Joyce.
"Pat will do that just before the horses move onto the track. Now let's get going. It's weigh-in time."
We moved to the scales with our rider. He stepped aboard the platform, complete with silks and saddle, and the spinner leaped to a staggering 102, whereupon the officials started gravely handing him little leather sacks.
"What's this?" I whispered to Sandy. "Prizes for malnutrition? He must have won all the blackjacks east of the Mississippi."
"The handicap," she whispered back. "Lead weights at one pound each."
"If he starts to lose," I ruminated, "they'd make wonderful ammunition--"
"One hundred and twenty-four," announced the chief weigher-inner. "Next entry!"
We returned to Tapwater. The jockey fastened the weights to his gear, saddled up and mounted. From the track came the traditional bugle call. Sandy nodded to Pat.
"All right, Pat. Now!"
Pending twisted the knob on his lightening rod and handed the stick to the jockey. The little horseman gasped, rose three inches in his stirrups, and almost let go of the baton.
"H-hey!" he exclaimed. "I feel funny. I feel--"
"Never mind that," I told him. "Just you hold on to that rod until the race is over. And when you come back, give it to Pat immediately. Understand?"
"Yes. But I feel so--so lightheaded--"
"That's because you're featherbrained," I advised him. "Now, get going. Giddyap, Dobbin!"
I patted Tapwater's flank, and so help me Newton, I think that one gentle tap pushed the colt half way to the starting gate! He pattered across the turf with a curious bouncing gait as if he were running on tiptoe. We hastened to our seats in the grandstand.
"Did you get all the bets down?" asked Joyce.
I nodded and displayed a deck of ducats. "It may not have occurred to you, my sweet," I announced gleefully, "but these pasteboards are transferrable on demand to rice and old shoes, the sweet strains of Oh, Promise Me! and the scent of orange blossoms. You insisted I should have a nest egg before you would murmur, 'I do'? Well, after this race these tickets will be worth--" I cast a swift last glance at the tote board's closing odds, quoting Tapwater at 35 to 1--"approximately seventy thousand dollars!"
"Donald!" gasped Joyce. "You didn't bet all your savings?"
"Every cent," I told her cheerfully. "Why not?"
"But if something should go wrong! If Tapwater should lose!"
"He won't. See what I mean?"
For even as we were talking, the bell jangled, the crowd roared, and the horses were off. Eight entries surged from the starting gate. And already one full length out in front pranced the weight-free, lightfoot Tapwater!
At the quarter post our colt had stretched his lead to three lengths, and I shouted in Pending's ear, "How much does that jockey weigh, anyway?"
"About six pounds," said Pat. "I turned the knob to cancel one eighteen."
At the half, all the other horses could glimpse of Tapwater was heels. At the three-quarter post he was so far ahead that the jockey must have been lonely. As he rounded into the stretch I caught a binocular view of his face, and he looked dazed and a little frightened. He wasn't actually riding Tapwater. The colt was simply skimming home, and he was holding on for dear life to make sure he didn't blow off the horse's back. The result was a foregone conclusion, of course. Tapwater crossed the finish line nine lengths ahead, setting a new track record.
The crowd went wild. Over the hubbub I clutched Pat's arm and bawled, "I'll go collect our winnings. Hurry down to the track and swap that lightening rod for the real bat we brought along. He'll have to weigh out again, you know. Scoot!"
The others vanished paddockward as I went for the big payoff. It was dreary at the totalizer windows. I was one of a scant handful who had bet on Tapwater, so it took no time at all to scoop into the valise I had brought along the seventy thousand bucks in crisp, green lettuce which an awed teller passed across the counter. Then I hurried back to join the others in the winner's circle, where bedlam was not only reigning but pouring. Flashbulbs were popping all over the place, cameramen were screaming for just one more of the jockey, the owner, the fabulous Tapwater. The officials were vainly striving to quiet the tumult so they could award the prize. I found Pending worming his way out of the heart of the crowd.
"Did you get it?" I demanded.
He nodded, thrust the knobbed baton into my hand.
"You substituted the normal one?"
Again he nodded. Hastily I thrust the lightening rod out of sight into my valise, and we elbowed forward to share the triumphant moment. It was a great experience. I felt giddy with joy; I was walking on little pink clouds of happiness. Security was mine at last. And Joyce, as well.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" cried the chief official. "Your attention, please! Today we have witnessed a truly spectacular feat: the setting of a new track record by a champion racing under a tremendous handicap. I give you a magnificent racehorse--Tapwater!"
"That's right, folks!" I bawled, carried away by the excitement. "Give this little horse a great big hand!"
Setting the example, I laid down the bag, started clapping vigorously. From a distance I heard Pat Pending's agonized scream.
"Mr. Mallory--the suitcase! Grab it!"
I glanced down, belatedly aware of the danger of theft. But too late. The bag had disappeared.
"Hey!" I yelled. "Who swiped my bag? Police!"
"Up there, Mr. Mallory!" bawled Pat. "Jump!"
I glanced skyward. Three feet above my head and rising swiftly was the valise in which I had cached not only our winnings but Pat's gravity-defying rod! I leaped--but in vain. I was still making feeble, futile efforts to make like the moon-hurdling nursery rhyme cow when quite a while later two strong young men in white jackets came and jabbed me with a sedative ...
* * * * *
Later, when time and barbiturates had dulled the biting edge of my despair, we assembled once again in my office and I made my apologies to my friends.
"It was all my fault," I acknowledged. "I should have realized Pat hadn't readjusted the rod when I placed it in my bag. It felt lighter. But I was so excited--"
"It was my fault," mourned Pat, "for not changing it immediately. But I was afraid someone might see me."
"Perhaps if we hired an airplane--?" I suggested.
Pat shook his head.
"No, Mr. Mallory. The rod was set to cancel 118 pounds. The bag weighed less than twenty. It will go miles beyond the reach of any airplane before it settles into an orbit around earth."
"Well, there goes my dreamed-of fortune," I said sadly. "Accompanied by the fading strains of an unplayed wedding march. I'm sorry, Joyce."
"Isn't there one thing you folks are overlooking?" asked Sandy Thomas. "My goodness, you'd think we had lost our last cent just because that little old bag flew away!"
"For your information," I told her, "that is precisely what happened to me. My entire bank account vanished into the wild blue yonder. And some of Pat's money, too."
"But have you forgotten," she insisted, "that we won the race? Of course the track officials were a wee bit suspicious when your suitcase took off. But they couldn't prove anything. So they paid me the Gold Stakes prize. If we split it four ways, we all make a nice little profit.
"Or," she added, "if you and Joyce want to make yours a double share, we could split it three ways.
"Or," she continued hopefully, "if Pat wants to, we could make two double shares, and split it fifty-fifty?"
From the look in Pat's eyes I knew he was stunned by this possibility. And from the look in hers, I felt she was going to make every effort to take advantage of his bewilderment.
So, as I said before, what this country needs is a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There's a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim it. Seventy thousand bucks in cold, hard cash.
Indubitatiously!
A PRIZE FOR EDIE
by Jesse Franklin Bone
The Committee had, unquestionably, made a mistake. There was no doubt that Edie had achieved the long-sought cancer cure ... but awarding the Nobel Prize was, nonetheless, a mistake ...
The letter from America arrived too late. The Committee had regarded acceptance as a foregone conclusion, for no one since Boris Pasternak had turned down a Nobel Prize. So when Professor Doctor Nels Christianson opened the letter, there was not the slightest fear on his part, or on that of his fellow committeemen, Dr. Eric Carlstrom and Dr. Sven Eklund, that the letter would be anything other than the usual routine acceptance.
"At last we learn the identity of this great research worker," Christianson murmured as he scanned the closely typed sheets. Carlstrom and Eklund waited impatiently, wondering at the peculiar expression that fixed itself on Christianson's face. Fine beads of sweat appeared on the professor's high narrow forehead as he laid the letter down. "Well," he said heavily, "now we know."
"Know what?" Eklund demanded. "What does it say? Does she accept?"
"She accepts," Christianson said in a peculiar half-strangled tone as he passed the letter to Eklund. "See for yourself."
Eklund's reaction was different. His face was a mottled reddish white as he finished the letter and handed it across the table to Carlstrom. "Why," he demanded of no one in particular, "did this have to happen to us?"
"It was bound to happen sometime," Carlstrom said. "It's just our misfortune that it happened to us." He chuckled as he passed the letter back to Christianson. "At least this year the presentation should be an event worth remembering."
"It seems that we have a little problem," Christianson said, making what would probably be the understatement of the century. Possibly there would be greater understatements in the remaining ninety-nine years of the Twenty-first Century, but Carlstrom doubted it. "We certainly have our necks out," he agreed.
"We can't do it!" Eklund exploded. "We simply can't award the Nobel Prize in medicine and physiology to that ... that C. Edie!" He sputtered into silence.
"We can hardly do anything else," Christianson said. "There's no question as to the identity of the winner. Dr. Hanson's letter makes that unmistakably clear. And there's no question that the award is deserved."
"We still could award it to someone else," Eklund said.
"Not a chance. We've already said too much to the press. It's known all over the world that the medical award is going to the discoverer of the basic cause of cancer, to the founder of modern neoplastic therapy." Christianson grimaced. "If we changed our decision now, there'd be all sorts of embarrassing questions from the press."
"I can see it now," Carlstrom said, "the banquet, the table, the flowers, and Professor Doctor Nels Christianson in formal dress with the Order of St. Olaf gleaming across his white shirtfront, standing before that distinguished audience and announcing: 'The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology is awarded to--' and then that deadly hush when the audience sees the winner."
"You needn't rub it in," Christianson said unhappily. "I can see it, too."
"These Americans!" Eklund said bitterly. He wiped his damp forehead. The picture Carlstrom had drawn was accurate but hardly appealing. "One simply can't trust them. Publishing a report as important as that as a laboratory release. They should have given proper credit."
"They did," Carlstrom said. "They did--precisely. But the world, including us, was too stupid to see it. We have only ourselves to blame."
"If it weren't for the fact that the work was inspired and effective," Christianson muttered, "we might have a chance of salvaging this situation. But through its application ninety-five per cent of cancers are now curable. It is obviously the outstanding contribution to medicine in the past five decades."
"But we must consider the source," Eklund protested. "This award will make the prize for medicine a laughingstock. No doctor will ever accept another. If we go through with this, we might as well forget about the medical award from now on. This will be its swan song. It hits too close to home. Too many people have been saying similar things about our profession and its trend toward specialization. And to have the Nobel Prize confirm them would alienate every doctor in the world. We simply can't do it."
"Yet who else has made a comparable discovery? Or one that is even half as important?" Christianson asked.
"That's a good question," Carlstrom said, "and a good answer to it isn't going to be easy to find. For my part, I can only wish that Alphax Laboratories had displayed an interest in literature rather than medicine. Then our colleagues at the Academy could have had the painful decision."
"Their task would be easier than ours," Christianson said wearily. "After all, the criteria of art are more flexible. Medicine, unfortunately, is based upon facts."
"That's the hell of it," Carlstrom said.
"There must be some way to solve this problem," Eklund said. "After all it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. Perhaps that might offer grounds--"
"I don't think so," Carlstrom interrupted. "The means in this case aren't as important as the results, and we can't deny that the cancer problem is virtually solved."
"Even though men have been saying for the past two generations that the answer was probably in the literature and all that was needed was someone with the intelligence and the time to put the facts together, the fact remains that it was C. Edie who did the job. And it required quite a bit more than merely collecting facts. Intelligence and original thinking of a high order was involved." Christianson sighed.
"Someone," Eklund said bitterly. "Some thing you mean. C. Edie--C.E.D.--Computer, Extrapolating, Discriminatory. Manufactured by Alphax Laboratories, Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. C. Edie! Americans!!--always naming things. A machine wins the Nobel Prize. It's fantastic!"
Christianson shook his head. "It's not fantastic, unfortunately. And I see no way out. We can't even award the prize to the team of engineers who designed and built Edie. Dr. Hanson is right when he says the discovery was Edie's and not the engineers'. It would be like giving the prize to Albert Einstein's parents because they created him."
* * * * *
"Is there any way we can keep the presentation secret?" Eklund asked.
"I'm afraid not. The presentations are public. We've done too good a job publicizing the Nobel Prize. As a telecast item, it's almost the equal of the motion picture Academy Award."
"I can imagine the reaction when our candidate is revealed in all her metallic glory. A two-meter cube of steel filled with microminiaturized circuits, complete with flashing lights and cogwheels," Carlstrom chuckled. "And where are you going to hang the medal?"
Christianson shivered. "I wish you wouldn't give that metal nightmare a personality," he said. "It unnerves me. Personally, I wish that Dr. Hanson, Alphax Laboratories, and Edie were all at the bottom of the ocean--in some nice deep spot like the Mariannas Trench." He shrugged. "Of course, we won't have that sort of luck, so we'll have to make the best of it."
"It just goes to show that you can't trust Americans," Eklund said. "I've always thought we should keep our awards on this side of the Atlantic where people are sane and civilized. Making a personality out of a computer--ugh! I suppose it's their idea of a joke."
"I doubt it," Christianson said. "They just like to name things--preferably with female names. It's a form of insecurity, the mother fixation. But that's not important. I'm afraid, gentlemen, that we shall have to make the award as we have planned. I can see no way out. After all, there's no reason why the machine cannot receive the prize. The conditions merely state that it is to be presented to the one, regardless of nationality, who makes the greatest contribution to medicine or physiology."
"I wonder how His Majesty will take it," Carlstrom said.
"The king! I'd forgotten that!" Eklund gasped.
"I expect he'll have to take it," Christianson said. "He might even appreciate the humor in the situation."
"Gustaf Adolf is a good king, but there are limits," Eklund observed.
"There are other considerations," Christianson replied. "After all, Edie is the reason the Crown Prince is still alive, and Gustaf is fond of his son."
"After all these years?"
Christianson smiled. Swedish royalty was long-lived. It was something of a standing joke that King Gustaf would probably outlast the pyramids, providing the pyramids lived in Sweden. "I'm sure His Majesty will cooperate. He has a strong sense of duty and since the real problem is his, not ours, I doubt if he will shirk it."
"How do you figure that?" Eklund asked.
"We merely select the candidates according to the rules, and according to the nature of their contribution. Edie is obviously the outstanding candidate in medicine for this year. It deserves the prize. We would be compromising with principle if we did not award it fairly."
"I suppose you're right," Eklund said gloomily. "I can't think of any reasonable excuse to deny the award."
"Nor I," Carlstrom said. "But what did you mean by that remark about this being the king's problem?"
"You forget," Christianson said mildly. "Of all of us, the king has the most difficult part. As you know, the Nobel Prize is formally presented at a State banquet."
"Well?"
"His Majesty is the host," Christianson said. "And just how does one eat dinner with an electronic computer?"
THE END
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW
by Miles John Breuer
In their pursuit of an unscrupulous scientist, Phil and Ione are swung into hyperspace--marooned in a realm of strange sights and shapes.
Tony Costello leaned glumly over his neat, glass-topped desk, on which a few papers lay arranged in orderly piles. Tony was very blue and discouraged. The foundations of a pleasant and profitable existence had been cut right out from under him. Gone were the days in which the big racket boss, Scarneck Ed, generously rewarded the exercise of Tony's brilliant talents as an engineer in redesigning cars to give higher speed for bootlegging purposes, in devising automatic electric apparatus for handling and concealing liquor, in designing beam-directed radios for secret communication among the gangs. Yes, mused Tony, it had been profitable.
Six months ago the Citizens' Committee had stepped in. Now the police department was reorganized; Scarneck Ed Podkowski was in jail, and his corps of trusty lieutenants were either behind the bars with him or scattered far and wide in flight. Tony, always a free spender, had nothing left but the marvelous laboratory and workshop that Scarneck Ed had built him, and his freedom. For the police could find nothing legal against Tony. They had been compelled to let him alone, though they were keeping a close watch on him. Tony's brow was as dark as the mahogany of his desk. He did not know just how to go about making an honest living.
With a hand that seemed limp with discouragement, he reached into his pocket for his cigarette-case. As he drew it out, the lackadaisical fingers failed to hold it firmly enough, and it clattered to the floor behind his chair. With the weary slowness of despondence, he dragged himself to his feet and went behind his chair to pick up the cigarette-case. But, before he bent over it, and while he was looking fully and directly at it, his desk suddenly vanished. One moment it was there, a huge ornament of mahogany and glass; the next moment there was nothing.
* * * * *
Tony suddenly went rigid and stared at the empty space where his desk had stood. He put his hand to his forehead, wondering if his financial troubles were affecting his reason. By that time, another desk stood in the place.
Tony ran over this strange circumstance mentally. His mental processes were active beneath, though dazed on the surface. His desk had stood there. While looking fully at it, all his senses intact, he had seen it vanish, and for a moment there had been nothing in its place. While he stared directly at the empty space from which the desk had disappeared, another desk had materialized there, like a flash. Perhaps, there had been a sort of jar, a tremor, of the floor and of the air, of everything. But the point was that his own desk, at which he had been working one moment, had suddenly vanished, and at the next moment another desk had appeared in its place.
And what a desk! The one that now stood there was smaller than his own palatial one, and shabbier. A raw, unpleasant golden-oak, much scratched and scuffed. Its top was heaped and piled full of books and papers. In the middle of it stood a photograph of a girl, framed in red leather. Irresistibly, the sunny beauty of the face, the bright eyes, the firm little chin, the tall forehead topped by a shining mass of light curly hair, drew Tony's first glance. For a few moments his eyes rested delightedly on the picture.
In a moment, however, Tony noticed that the books and papers on the desk were of a scientific character; and such is the nature of professional interest, that for the time he forgot his astonishment at how the desk had got there, in his absorption in the things heaped on top of it.
Perhaps it isn't fair to give the impression that the desk was in disorder. It was merely busy; just as though someone who had been deeply engaged in working had for the moment stepped away. There was a row of books across the back edge, and Tony leaned over eagerly to glance at the titles.
"'Theory of Parallels,' Lobatchevsky; 'Transformation of Complex Functions,' Riemann; 'Tensors and Geodesics,' Gauss," Tony read. "Hm--old stuff. But here's modern dope along the same line. 'Tensors,' by Christoffel; 'Absolute Differential Calculus,' by Ricci and Levi Civita. And Schrödinger and Eddington and D'Abro. Looks like somebody's interested in Relativity. Hm!"
* * * * *
He bent over, his constantly increasing interest showing in the attitude of his body; he turned over papers and opened notebooks crowded full of handwritten figures. Last of all he noted the batch of manuscript directly in front of him in the middle of the front edge of the desk. It was typewritten, with corrections and interlineations all over it in purple ink.
A title, "The Parallel Transformations of Equations for Matter, Energy, and Tensors," had been crossed out with purple ink, and "The Intimate Relation between Matter and Tensors" substituted. Tony bent over it and read. He was so fascinated that it did not even occur to him to speculate on the happy circumstance that the mysteriously appearing desk had brought its own scientific explanation with it. The title of the paper told him that its sheets would elucidate the apparently supernatural phenomenon, and all he did was to plunge breathlessly ahead in his eager reading. The article was short, about seven typewritten sheets. He took out his pencil and followed through the mathematical equations readily. Tony's mind was a brilliant, even though an erring one.
Under the first article lay a second one. One glance at the title caused Tony to stiffen. Then he picked up the typewritten script and carried it across the big room of his laboratory, as far away from the desk as he could get. He put the girl's photograph in his pocket. Then he took heaps and armfuls of papers, books and notes and carried them from the desk to a bench in the far corner. For, as soon as he had read the title, "A Preliminary Report of Experimental Work in the Physical Manipulation of Tensors," a sudden icy panic gripped his heart lest the desk and its papers suddenly disappear before he had finished reading to the end of the fascinating explanation.
We might add that it did not. For many weeks the desk remained standing in Tony's shop and laboratory, and he had the opportunity to study its contents thoroughly. But it took him only a few hours to grasp its secret, to add his own brilliant conception to it, and to form his great resolve. Once more Tony faced the world hopefully and enthusiastically.
PART II
Vanishing Valuables
The police understood Tony's share in the exploits of Scarneck Ed thoroughly, and, chagrined at their failure to produce proof that would hold in court, they maintained a close and constant watch on that gifted gentleman long after crime matters in the city seemed to have been cleaned up and forgotten. For one thing, they still had hopes that something would turn up to enable them to round off their work and lock him up with his former pals; for another, they did not fully trust his future behavior. Nevertheless, for three or four months it seemed as though Tony had genuinely reformed. He lived in and for his laboratory and shop. All day the scouts could see him laboring therein, and far into the night he bent over benches and machines under shaded lights. Then, some other astonishing occurrences distracted their attention from Tony to other fields.
One morning Mr. Ambrose Parakeet, private jewel broker, walked briskly out of the elevator on the fourteenth floor of the North American Building and unlocked the door of his office. He flung it open and started in, but stopped as if shot, uttered a queer, hoarse gurgle, and staggered against the door-casing. In a moment he recovered and began to shout:
"Help! Help! Robbers!"
Before long, several people had gathered. He stood there, gasping, pointing with his hand into the room. The eagerly peering onlookers could see that beside his desk stood an empty crate. It was somewhat old and weatherbeaten and looked as though it might have come from a buffet or a bookcase. He stood there and pointed at it and gasped, and the gathering crowd in the corridor wondered what sort of strange mental malady he had been seized with. The elevator girl, with trained promptness had at once summoned the manager of the building, who elbowed his way through the crowd and stood beside Mr. Parakeet.
* * * * *
"There! There! Look! Where is it?" Mr. Parakeet was gasping slowly and gazing round in a circle. He was a little gray man of about sixty, and seemed utterly dazed and overcome.
"What's wrong, Mr. Parakeet?" asked the building manager. "I didn't know you had your safe moved out."
"But, no!" panted the bewildered old man. "I didn't. It's gone. Just gone. Last night at five o'clock I locked the office, and it was there, and everything was straight. What did you do? Who took it?"
The building manager conducted the poor old man into the office, shut the door, and asked the crowd to disperse. He sat Mr. Parakeet down into the most comfortable chair he could find, and then barked snappily into the telephone a few times. Then he sat and stared about him, stopping occasionally to reassure the old man and ask him to be patient until things could be investigated.
The building manager was an efficient man and knew his building and his tenants. He knew, as thoroughly as he knew his own office, that Mr. Parakeet had a medium-sized A. V. & L. Co.'s safe weighing about three tons, that could not be carried up the elevator when Mr. Parakeet had moved in, and had been hoisted into the window with block and tackle. He knew that it was physically impossible for the safe to go down any of the elevators, and knew that none of the operators would dare move any kind of a safe without his permission. Nevertheless, with the aid of a police-sergeant, his night-shift, and the night-watchmen of his building and adjacent ones, it was definitely established that nothing had been moved in or out of the North American Building during the preceding twenty-four hours, either by elevator or through a window to the sidewalk.
* * * * *
The newspapers took up the mystery with a shout. The prostrating loss suffered by Mr. Parakeet, amounting to over a hundred thousand dollars, added no little sensation to the story. A huge safe, disappearing into thin air, without a trace, and in its place an old wooden crate! What a mouthful for the scareheads! For several days newspapers kept up items about it, dwindling in size and strategic importance of position; for nothing further was ever found. Every bit of investigation, including that by scientific men from the University of Chicago, was futile; not a trace, not a suggestion did it yield.
Six days later the tall scareheads leaped out again: "Another Safe Disappears! Absolutely No Trace! Some time during the night, the six-foot steel safe of the Simonson Loan Company vanished into thin air. In the morning a dilapidated iron oil-cask was found in its place. The safe was so large and heavy that it could not have been moved without a large truck, special hoisting apparatus, a crew of men, and some hours of time. The store was brightly lighted during the entire night, and two watchmen patrolled it regularly. They report that they saw and heard nothing unusual, and were very much amazed when shown the oil-cask standing where the safe had been the night before." The accounts in the various papers were substantially the same.
Newspaper readers throughout the city and its environs were very much intrigued. Such a thing was very exciting and mystifying; but it was so far out of touch with their own lives that it did not affect them very much at any time except when they were reading the paper or discussing it in conversation. The police were the ones who were doing the real worrying. And, when the following week two more safes disappeared, insurance companies began to take an interest in the matter; and everyone who had any considerable amount of valuables in store began to feel panicky.
* * * * *
The circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the last of the series, the fourth, were especially amazing. This was also a jewelry safe. Canzoni's is a popular firm that rents a quarter of a floor in a big department store, and does a large volume of moderate-priced business. The receipts are stored in a heavy portable safe in a corner of the silverware section until evening, when they are carried to the large vault of the big store. One Saturday afternoon after a particularly busy day, Mr. Shipley, Canzoni's manager, was watching the hands of the clock creep toward five-thirty. He leaned on a counter and watched the clerks putting away goods for the night; he glanced idly toward the safe which he intended to open in a few minutes. The doormen had already taken their stations to keep out further customers. Then he glanced back at the safe, and it wasn't there!
Mr. Shipley drew a deep breath. The safe disappearances he had read about flashed through his mind. But he didn't believe it. It couldn't be! Yet, there was the empty corner with the birch panels forming the back of the show-windows, and no safe. In a daze, he walked over to the corner, intending to feel about with his hands and make sure the safe was really gone. Before he got there, there flashed into sight in place of the safe, a barrel of dark wood; and in a moment there was a strong odor of vinegar.
Things spun around with Mr. Shipley for a few moments. He grasped a counter and looked wildly about him. Clerks were hurrying with the covering of counters; no one seemed to have noticed anything. He stood a moment, gritted his teeth, and breathed deeply, and soon was master of himself. He stood and waited until the last customer was gone, and then called several clerks and pointed to where the safe had stood.
Within the space of a month, thirteen safes and three million dollars worth of money or property had disappeared. The police were dazed and desperate, and business was in a panic. Scientific men were appealed to, to help solve the riddle, but were helpless. Many of them agreed that though in theory such things were explainable, science was as yet far from any known means of bringing them about in actuality. Insurance companies spent fabulous sums on investigation, and, failing to get results, raised their premiums to impossible levels.
PART III
The Lady of the Picture
Phil Hurren, often known as "Zip" Hurren, reporter on the Examiner, felt, on the day the managing editor called him into the sanctum, that fortune could smile on him no more brightly. There wasn't anything brighter.
"You stand well with the detective bureau," his boss had said; "and you've followed this safe-disappearing stuff pretty closely. You're relieved of everything else for the time being. Get on that business, and see that the public hears from the Examiner!"
Phil knew better than to say any more, for before he recovered from his surprise, the editor had turned his back, buried himself in his work on the desk, and forgotten that Phil was there. Nor did Phil waste any real time in rejoicing. That is why he was called "Zip." When things happened, whether it was luck or system, Phil was usually there. In sixty seconds more, Phil was in a taxicab, whirling toward police headquarters.
Luck or system, he didn't know, but he struck it again. The big wagon was just starting away from the station door when he arrived, crowded inside with bluecoats and plainclothes-men. The burly, red-faced man with chevrons on his sleeve, sitting beside the driver, saw Phil jump out, and motioned with his hand. Phil leaped up on the back step of the vehicle and hung on for dear life with his fingers through the wire grating as they careened through the streets. The men on the inside grinned at him; a number of them knew him and liked him. Gradually the door was opened and he crowded in. He found Sergeant Johnson and eyed him mutely.
"How the hell do you find these things out, I'd like to know," the sergeant exclaimed. "Are you a mind-reader?"
"I don't really know anything," Phil admitted with that humility which the police like on the part of newspaper men and seldom meet with. "Do you mind?"
"No objection," grunted the sergeant. "Been watching all the old crooks since these safes have been popping. Nothin' much on any of them, except this slippery wop, Tony Costello. No, we haven't caught him at anything. Seems to be keeping close and minding his own business. Working in his laboratory. Ought to make a good living if he turned honest; clever guy, he seems. But he's been too prosperous lately. Lots of machinery delivered to his place; we traced it to the manufacturers and find it cost thousands. Big deposits in his banks. But, no trace of his having sold anything or worked at anything outside his own place. So, we're running over to surprise him and help him get the cobwebs out of his closets."
* * * * *
The raid on Tony Costello's shop and laboratory disclosed nothing whatever. They surrounded the place effectively and surprised Tony genuinely. But a thorough search of every nook and cranny revealed nothing whatever of a suspicious nature. There was merely a tremendous amount of apparatus and machinery that none of the raiding party understood anything about. Tony's person was also thoroughly searched, and the leather-framed photograph of the beautiful unknown girl was found.
"Who's this?" the sergeant demanded. "She don't look like anyone that might belong to your crowd."
"I don't know," Tony replied.
"Whad'ya mean, don't know?" The sergeant gave him a rough shake. "What'ya carryin' it for, then?"
"I had really forgotten that it was in my pocket," Tony replied calmly, at his ease. "I found it in a hotel room one day, and liked the looks of it."
"I know you're lying there," the sergeant said, "though I'm ready to believe that you don't know her. Too high up for you. Well, it looks suspicious and we'll take the picture."
"Boy!" gasped Phil. "What a girl she must be in person! Even the picture would stand out among a thousand. May I have the picture, Sergeant?"
"You can come and get a copy of it to-morrow. We'll have it copied and see if we can trace the subject of it. That might tell us something."
* * * * *
The following morning Phil was at Police Headquarters to pick up further information, and to get a copy of the girl's photograph. Like the police, he could not keep his mind off the idea that there was some association between the crooked engineer and the disappearance of the safes. It seemed to fit too well. The scientific nature of the phenomena, Tony Costello's well known reputation for scientific brilliance, and his recent affluence; what else could it mean? In some way, Tony was getting at these safes. But how? And how prove it? Most exhaustive searches failed to reveal any traces of the safes anywhere. If any fragment of one of them had appeared in New York or San Francisco, the news would have come at once, such was the sensation all over the country that the series of disappearances had caused. Tony's calm insolence during the raid, his attitude of waiting patiently till the police should have had their fun and have it over with so that he might be left at peace again, showed that he must be guilty, for anyone else would have protested and felt deeply injured and insulted. He seemed to be enjoying their discomfiture, and absolutely confident of his own safety.
"There's got to be some way of getting him," Phil mused; and he mused almost absent-mindedly, for he was gazing at the photograph of the girl. For many minutes he looked at it, and then put it silently into his pocket.
Five o'clock in the evening of that same day came the news of another safe disappearance. Phil got his tip over the phone, and in fifteen minutes was at the scene. It was too much like the others to go into detail about; a six-foot portable safe had suddenly disappeared right in front of the eyes of the office staff of The Epicure, a huge restaurant and cafeteria that fed five thousand people three times a day. In its place stood a ragged, rusty old Ford coupe body. He went away from there, shaking his head.
Then suddenly in the midst of his dinner, he jumped up, and ran. An idea had leaped into his head.
"Right after one of these things pops is the time to take a peek at Tony," he said to himself, and immediately he was on the way.
* * * * *
But how to get his peep was not so easy a problem. When he alighted from his cab a block away from Tony's building, he was hesitant about approaching it. Tony knew him, and might see him first. Phil circled the brick building, keeping under cover or far enough away; all around it was a belt of thirty feet of lawn between the building and the sidewalk. Ought he have called the police and given them his idea? Or should he wait till darkness and see what he could do alone?
Then suddenly he saw her. Across the street, standing in the shelter of a delivery truck in front of an apartment, she was observing Tony's building intently. The aristocratic chin, the brightness of the eyes, the waves of her hair, and the general sunny expression! It could not be anyone else. Post haste he ran across the street.
"Pardon me!" he cried excitedly, lifting his hat and then digging hastily into his inner pocket. "I'm sure you must be the--"
"Well, the nerve!" the young woman said icily, and pointing her chin at the opposite horizon she walked haughtily away.
By that time Phil had dug out his picture and was running after her.
"Please," he said, "just a moment!" And he held the picture out in front of her face.
"Now, where in the world--?" She looked at him in puzzled and indignant inquiry, and then burst out laughing.
"It is you, isn't it?" Phil asked. "What are you laughing at?"
"Oh, you looked so abject. I'm sure your intentions must be good. Now tell me where you got my picture."
"Let us walk this way," suggested Phil, leading away from Tony's building.
* * * * *
And, as they walked, he told her the story. When he got through she stood and looked at him a long time in silence.
"You look square to me," she said. "You're working on my side already. Will you help me."
"I'll do anything--anything--" Phil said, and couldn't think of any other way of expressing his willingness, for the wonderful eyes bore radiantly upon him.
"First I must tell you my story," she began. "But before I can do so, you must promise me that it is to remain an absolute secret. You're a newspaper man--"
Phil gave his promise readily.
"My father is Professor Bloomsbury at the University of Chicago. He has been experimenting in mathematical physics, and I have been assisting him. He has succeeded in proving experimentally the concept of tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact that space is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinite distance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter, there is a pucker or a wrinkle in space. My father has found that by suddenly removing a portion of matter from out of space, the pucker flattens out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal sudden enough, there is a violent disturbance of space. By planning all the steps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section of space on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing two portions of space to change places through hyperspace, or as you might express it popularly, through the fourth dimension."
* * * * *
Phil held his hands to his head.
"It is not difficult," she went on smiling. "Loan me your pocket knife and a piece of paper from your notebook. If I cut out a rectangular piece of paper from this sheet and mount it on a pivot or shaft at A B, I can rotate it through 180 degrees, just like a child's teeter-totter, so that X will be where Y originally was. That is in two dimensions. Now, simply add one dimension all the way round and you will have what daddy is doing with space. He does it by shoving fifty or a hundred pounds of lead right out of space; the sudden flattening out of the tensors causes a section of space to flop around, and two portions of space change places. The first time he tried it, his desk disappeared, and we've never seen it again. We've thought it was somewhere out in hyperspace; but this terrible story of yours about disappearing safes, and the fact that you have this picture, means that someone has got the desk."
"Surely you must have suspected that long ago, when the disappearances first began?" Phil suggested.
"I've just returned from Europe," said Miss Bloomsbury. "I was tremendously puzzled when I got my first newspapers in New York and read about the safes. Gradually I gathered all the news on the subject, and it seemed most reasonable to suspect this gangster engineer."
"Great minds and same channels," Phil smiled. "But your father. Why didn't he speak up when the safes began to pop?"
"Ha! ha!" she laughed a tinkly little laugh. "My father doesn't know what safes are for, nor who is President, nor that there has been a war. Mother and I take care of him, and he works on tensors. He has probably never heard about the safes."
* * * * *
"What were you going to do around here?" Phil asked, marveling at the courage of the girl who had come to look the situation over personally.
"I hadn't formed any definite plans. I just wanted to look about first."
"Well," said Phil, "as you will soon see by the papers, another safe has puffed out. It occurred to me that we might find out something by spying about here immediately after one of the disappearances. That's why I'm here. If you'll tell me where you live, or wait for me at some safe place, I'll come and report to you as soon as I find out anything."
"Oho! So that's the kind of a girl you think I am!" She laughed sunnily again. "No, Mr. Reporter. Either we reconnoiter together, or each on our own."
"Oh, together, by all means," said Phil so earnestly that she laughed again. "And since we'd better wait for darkness, let's have something to eat somewhere. I didn't finish my dinner."
Phil found Ione Bloomsbury in person to be even more wonderful than her photograph suggested. Obviously she had brains; it was apparent, too that she had breeding. Her cheerful view of the world was like a tonic for tired nerves; and withal, she had a gentle sort of courtesy in her manner that may have been old-fashioned, but it was almost too much for Phil. Before the dinner was over, he would have laid his heart at her feet. It gave him a thrill that went to his head, to have her by his side, slipping along through the darkness toward Tony's building.
This building was a one-story brick affair with a vast amount of window space. From the sidewalk they could see faint lights glowing within, but could make out no further details. They therefore selected the darkest side of the building, and made their way hurriedly across the lawn. Here, they found, they could see the crowding apparatus within the one long room fairly well. They looked into one window after another, making a circuit around the building, until Phil suddenly clutched the girl's arm.
"Look!" he whispered. "Straight ahead and a little to the left!"
At the place he indicated stood a tall safe. Across the top of its door were painted in gold letters, the words: "The Epicure."
"That's the safe that went to-night," whispered Phil. "That's all we need to know. Now, quick to a telephone!"
"Oh," said a gentle, ironic voice behind them, "not so quick!"
* * * * *
They whirled around and found themselves looking into two automatic pistols, and behind them in the light of the street lamps, the sardonic smile of Tony Costello.
"Charmed at your kind interest in my playthings, I'm sure," he purred. "Only it leaves me in an embarrassing position. I'm not exactly sure what to do about it. Kindly step inside while I think."
Phil made a move sidewise along the wall.
"Stop!" barked Costello sharply. "Of course," his voice was quiet again, "that might be the simplest way out. I think I am within my legal rights if I shoot people who are trying to break into my property. Yet, that would be messy--not neat. Better step in. The window swings outward."
At the point of his pistols they clambered through the window, and he came in after them. He kept on talking, as though to himself, but loud enough for them to hear.
"Yes, we want some way out that is neater than that. Hm! Violence distresses me. Never liked Ed's rough methods. Yet, this is embarrassing."
He turned to them.
"What did you really want here? I see that you are the Examiner's reporter, and that you are the lady of the photograph. What did you come here for? Ah, yes, the safe. Well, go over and look at it."
As they hesitated, he stamped his foot and shrilled crankily:
"I mean it! Go, look at the safe! Is there anything else you want to know?"
"Yes," said Phil coolly, his self-control returning, "where are the other safes?"
"Oh. Anything to oblige. Last requests are a sort of point of honor, aren't they. Ought to grant them. Stand close to that safe!"
* * * * *
He backed away, his guns levelled at them. He laid down the right one, keeping the left one aimed, and moved some knobs on a dial and threw over a big switch. A muffled rumbling and whirring began somewhere; and then, slowly, a block of tables and apparatus ten feet square rose upward toward the ceiling. A section of the floor on which they stood came up, supported by columns, and now formed the roof of a room that had risen out of the floor. In it were four safes.
"Poor old Ed!" sighed Tony. "There was a time when he had a lot of good stuff put away down there. I've got six rooms like that. Well, the good old times are over."
He threw out the switch and the whole mass sank slowly and silently downward till the floor was level and there was no further sign of it. Then he backed away to another table, across the room from them, keeping his gun levelled.
"Too bad," he said. "I don't like to do these things. But--" he sighed deeply, "self-preservation. Now I'm going to flip you out, yes, out, into a strange region. I've never been there. I don't know if there is food or drink there. I hope so, for you'll never get back here."
Phil stiffened. He determined to leap and risk a shot. But he was too late. Tony's hand came down on a switch. There was a sudden, nauseating jar. The laboratory vanished.
There was only the safe, Ione Bloomsbury and himself, and a small circle of concrete floor extending to a dim little horizon a dozen feet away. Beyond that, nothing. Not blue, as the sky is. Not black, as dark, empty spaces are. It suggested black, because there was no impression of light or color on the eyes; but it wasn't black. It was nothingness.
PART IV
Marooned in Hyperspace
"I suppose you realize what he has done?" Miss Bloomsbury inquired.
"Couldn't be too sure, but it looks like plenty. What's the equation for it?" Beneath his jocularity, Phil felt a tremendous sinking within him. It looked serious, despite the fact that he did not understand it at all.
"He has swung us out into hyperspace, or into the fourth dimension, as your newspaper readers might understand it, and has let us hang there. Remember our slip of paper. Suppose X and Y were swung out of the plane of the paper and allowed to remain at an angle with it. We are at an angle with space, out in hyperspace."
There was a period of bewilderment, almost panic, in which they both felt so physically weak that they had to sit down on the concrete and stare at each other mutely. But this passed and their natural courage soon reasserted itself. Their first thought was to take stock of what information they could get on their situation; and their first step was to venture as close as possible to the queer little horizon which lay almost at their very feet. It gave them a frightened feeling, as though they were standing high up on a precipice or tower.
To their surprise, the horizon receded as they walked toward it, always remaining about a dozen feet away from them. At first they walked on concrete and then came to a crumbly edge of it and found themselves stepping on hard, sandy earth. Later there was rock, sometimes granite-like, sometimes black and shiny. But what they saw underfoot was nothing, compared with the glimpses of things they got out in the surrounding emptiness. First there was a vast space in which a soft light shone, and in which there were countless spheres of various sizes, motionlessly suspended. The spheres seemed to be made of wood, a green, sap-filled, unseasoned wood. The scene was visible for a few seconds, and vanished suddenly as they walked on. This astonished them; so they stepped back a pace or two and saw it again; and as they moved on, it disappeared again.
* * * * *
Then there was a great stretch of water in which the backs of huge monsters rolled and from which a hot wind blew for a few instants until they passed on and the scene vanished. There was a short walk with nothing but emptiness, and then there appeared huge, oblique, cubistic looking rows of jagged rocks in wild, dizzy formations that didn't look possible; and farther on, after another interval of emptiness, a tangle of brown, ropey vines with black-green leaves on them, an immense space filled with serpentine swinging loops and lengths of innumerable vines. Several loops projected so near them that they could have reached out and touched them had they wished.
"This is too much for me!" Phil gasped. "Have we gone crazy? Or did he kill us, and is this Purgatory?"
Ione smiled and shook her little head in which she had a goodly store of modern mathematics stored away.
"These must be glimpses of other 'spaces' besides our own space. If we could see in four dimensions we could see them all spread out before us. But we can only perceive in three dimensions; therefore, as we walk through hyperspace, past the different 'spaces' which are ranged about in it, we get a glimpse into such of them as are parallel with our own space. Can you understand that?"
"Oh, yes," groaned Phil. "It sounds just about like it looks. But, don't mind me. Go on, have your fun."
"I've been thinking about those wooden spheres," continued Ione. "I'm sure they must be sections of trees that are cut crosswise by our 'space;' they grow in three dimensions, but only two of them are our dimensions and a third is strange to us. We see only three-dimensional sections of them, which are spheres. There is more of them, that we cannot see, in another dimension."
"Yes, yes. Just as plain as the Jabberwock!"
"Look! There's a real Jabberwock!" exclaimed Ione.
On ahead of them they saw a number of creatures that seemed to be made of painted wooden balls in different colors, joined together.
"Tinkertoys!" exclaimed Phil. "Live ones! Big ones!"
The animals, though they looked for all the world as though they were made of painted wood, moved with jerky motions and clattered and snarled.
"There is probably more to them in another dimension," Ione said.
* * * * *
Suddenly one of the beasts approached them with a leap. There were two big eyes and two rows of teeth that came together with a snap, right on Phil's trouser-leg. He jerked himself away, sacrificing some square inches of trouser-leg, and, whirling around, kicked at the thing with all his force. It almost paralyzed his foot, for the animal seemed to be made of wood or bone. But it disappeared, and, as it did, both of them felt a queer, nauseating jolt. A few more minutes' walk brought them back to the safe without seeing any more spaces; and the sight of its black iron bulk filled them with a home-like relief, which in a moment they recognized as a mockery.
"Are we on a sphere of some sort?" Phil asked.
"Probably on an irregular mass of matter," Ione replied, "part of which is Tony's concrete floor, and part of which comes out of some other dimension. This mass of matter is at one end of a long, bar-like portion of space, the middle of which is pivoted in our world, somewhere in Chicago, and both ends of which are free in hyperspace."
"Then," suggested Phil, "why can't we walk down to the axle on which it is balanced, and step out into Chicago?"
"Because there isn't any matter for us to walk on. We are not able to move about in space, in three dimensions, you know. We can only get around in two dimensions, on the surface of matter."
"Well, let's try another exploration trip at right angles to our first one. After all, these 'spaces' are an interesting show, and I want to see some more."
They started out in the selected direction, and after a short walk got a glimpse of a vast space dotted with stars and nebulae, with two bright moons sailing overhead. A few steps farther on was a wall of solid granite, near enough to touch with their hands. Again, there was an intensely active mass of weaving bright stripes and loops and circles, seeming to consist of light only, and making them dizzy in a few seconds. Ione wondered if it might not be something like an organic molecule on a large scale. Again, odd, queer, indescribable shapes and outlines would appear and disappear, obviously three-dimensional sections of multi-dimensional things, cut by space. Once they passed a place of intense cold and terrific noise and escaped destruction or lunacy only because it took them the merest instant to get past.
They arrived back at the safe, very much fatigued from the strain, their minds woefully confused. Hunger and thirst were beginning to thrust up their little reminders; and for the first time the terrors of their position, flung out into hyperspace on a small, barren piece of matter, began to seem real.
* * * * *
After a rest they started out again. As Phil had touched, in kicking it, a creature from another "space," perhaps they might find water and even food somewhere. They retraced their first steps to the spot where they had at first seen water. They found it again and were able to dip their hands into it. It was warm, and too salty to drink. They came to the place with the creepers or vines, and Phil reached out and seized one of them. It was heavy, rubbery, and elastic, stretching readily as he pulled it.
"These little lurches that we feel must be the snapping back of the space-puckers as expressed by tensors," Ione remarked. "Every time matter goes in or out of space, the nature of space is altered."
"Well," observed Phil, releasing the vine, "I'd better be careful. If one of these things hauls me off here, our last bond with home is gone. I don't want to get lost in some other space."
As he released the vines they snapped back to their places, and the forest of them dimmed a little and reappeared.
They made the round again, dodging cautiously past the point where they had previously found the "Tinkertoy" animals, and succeeded in getting past their snapping teeth. But no promise of food or water did they find anywhere.
"Looks like we're sunk," observed Phil, as they dropped down on the concrete to rest, leaning their backs against the safe.
How time counted in hyperspace, neither Phil nor Ione could tell; Phil knew that his watch was running. He knew that it was ages and ages that he sat with his back against the safe, reviewing all the events of his put life, and thinking of this ignominious end to a lively career! He swore half aloud; then suddenly looked at Ione, ready to apologize. He found her weeping silently.
"I should never have let you come into the building with me," he stammered in confusion at her tears.
"Oh, what do I care what becomes of me!" she exclaimed angrily. "But who will take care of poor daddy? He doesn't even know when it's time to eat." And she burst into a fresh fit of weeping.
Phil bent his head in the dumbness of profound despair.
PART V
The Reversible Equation
Despair, however, is a luxury. Necessity is a stimulus. With the parchings of thirst and the gnawings of hunger, the two young people ceased swearing and weeping. Phil got up and paced about and sat down again. Ione's tears stopped and dried, and she sat and thought.
In the back of her mind there had been forming a vague sort of an idea, which had signalled ahead of itself that there was hope. She sat there and desperately drove her reason to its utmost efforts, to find that idea and bring it to the surface of consciousness. Hand to hand fights with wild animals, battles between ships of the line, vicious duels between ace-aviators in the clouds are tense fights; but they cannot compare in anxious difficulty with the struggle to bring up an unformed idea out of the subconscious mind--especially when one knows that the idea is there, and that it must be found to save one's life.
"Ione!" exclaimed Phil. It was the first time he had used the name. "What is the matter? You are as tense as a--"
"Ah!" cried Ione, springing up. "Tense! Tensors! I have it!"
Phil gazed at her in alarm. She laughed; at first it was a strained laugh, but gradually it melted into her sunny one.
"No, I'm not crazy. I knew there was a way out, and I've been trying to reason it out. How simple. You remember the little jolts when you pulled at the vines and when you kicked the funny animal? Tensors. Matter and space are so closely interrelated that you can't move matter in or out of space without causing disturbance, recoils, and tremors in space. Those bits of matter were small, and produced only a slight disturbance. It takes about a hundred pounds of lead to swing this segment--"
"Oho! Got you!" exclaimed Phil. "Not so dumb! The safe!"
"Yes. The safe!" Ione cried.
"Throw it off and watch us swing, eh? What would happen?"
"I might calculate it if I knew the weight of the safe."
"No calculating when I'm around," Phil said. "It couldn't make things any worse. Try it first and calculate afterwards."
* * * * *
They got behind the safe and pushed, and their combined strength against it was about as effective as it would have been in moving the Peoples' Gas Building. They sat down again in despair.
"Suppose we could budge it," Ione said. "All we could do would be to push it around, this piece of matter we are on. That wouldn't help. We've got to get it out of space. We can't push it hard enough to do that. It's got to be shot out suddenly--"
"And we haven't got a gun handy," Phil remarked droopingly.
"Not exactly a gun. A sort of sling--"
Phil leaped to his feet.
"A sling. Why! To be sure! The vines!"
Without another word, both of them got up and ran. They hastened in a direction opposite to the one they had at first taken on their trip of exploration, and this brought them first past the "space" of the Tinkertoy-like animals. As they went by, several of these beasts darted at them, one of them snapping at Ione's heels. She uttered a scream, causing Phil to turn about and kick right and left among them. He drove them back and escaped from them, rejoining Ione.
"Wait," he said, when they reached the vines. "Remember those wooden balls. If I could get a few to throw at those critters--"
In a moment they were off, and finally arrived at the point from which they first saw the balls. Odd it seemed, how they hung suspended in space, thousands of them, all sizes. Phil reached out and grasped one about the size of a baseball and drew it toward himself. He felt a dizzy lurch and heard Ione scream.
"Let go!" she screamed again.
When he suddenly realized what was going on, he found himself prostrate on the ground, with Ione across him, her arms about his knees.
"Do you realize," she panted, disentangling herself, "that you were pulling yourself out of this space into that one?"
"Thanks!" said Phil. "Never say die. More careful this time, and a smaller one."
* * * * *
He reached out and grasped a ball smaller than a golf-ball, and pulled carefully, keeping an eye upon Ione. There was resistance to his pull, but gradually the ball came. It seemed heavy. There was a crack as of breaking wood, and he fell backward, with a wave of nausea sweeping strongly over him. He gazed in amazement at a heavy wooden stick that he held in his hands. The only thing about it that suggested the ball for which he had reached was its diameter.
"Can't understand it, but appreciate it just the same," he said. He broke the stick in two, and had two excellent clubs.
"Simple," Ione replied. "The balls are cross-sections of these trees or sticks which grow in a 'space' at right angles to our own; and we only see their three-dimensional cross-sections."
"Yes," said Phil. "Cabbages and kings. I'm for you and the party."
A short walk brought them to the "space" of the vines. After testing the matter out carefully, they found that they could each pull two of them at a time. The vines stretched amazingly when they found those whose far ends were fixed firmly in the tangle, permitting them to carry their own ends along with them toward the safe. Phil wound his vines around his left arm and stuck one club through his belt. The other he got ready for the wooden animals.
He needed it. The size of the pack was doubled, and he rapped them till his hand was numb before he and Ione got by. Their vines drew out thin, but held until they were firmly tied about the safe. They went back after four more.
"I should judge," said Phil, "that by the time we get thirty or forty, the elastic pull will be strong enough to drag the safe back with them as they snap back home."
* * * * *
Trip after trip they made, fighting the wooden animals with their clubs each time. Their clothes were torn, and their legs bleeding; their throats were dry and lips cracked. The hard animals seemed to have a persistent, mechanical ferocity that was undismayed by hammering with the clubs and by repeated repulses. Phil could not seem to hurt them; he merely knocked them away. Finally, on the ninth trip, Ione collapsed when she reached the safe. As she fell, the elasticity of the vines began slowly to drag her back with them. Phil was forced to sit across her knees while he tied his own vines about the safe. Then he released her and added her vines to the great cable about the safe.
An overbold hard animal rattled up and snapped at her. Goaded to fury, Phil swung at it with his club and hurled it through the air. He could feel the lurch as it left his space and entered another. Then he pushed with his mightiest effort against the safe. It budged, and slid a few inches. He used his stick as a lever. It moved again, a little faster. Ione struggled to her feet and tried to help, but her efforts were ineffectual.
With one arm about her, Phil pried again under the safe, knowing that another trip after vines was out of question. Another animal snapped at their heels. For a while, it was kick backwards, then a shove at the safe. Each time the safe moved. The sight of its movement revived Ione, so that she was able to push also. Gradually it acquired a steady motion, pulled by the contraction of the vines; its progress soon became faster and faster. Phil was about to follow it and give it another push, when Ione drew him back.
Suddenly they experienced a sinking sensation and a fearful vertigo. The snapping animals faded. Ahead of them was the forest of vines, and they saw the safe hurled into it, crashing, plunging into the tangled mass. The whole view crumpled and moved upwards like a swirl of leaves in a wind, and then vanished with a snap.
* * * * *
They were sick and dizzy, but tremendously curious to see everything. The water, the cubistic cliffs, the vast space full of balls, all curiously blurred, appeared in succession. There were blank spaces and then blurred sights of things which they did not recognize, never having seen them before. Then the dizziness and the nausea abated, and ahead of them was a vast yellow blue, a huge nebula, and in it were double-colored suns and ringed planets with swarms of moons; this glorious sight remained for many seconds, as they gazed at it in panting astonishment, half reclining on the concrete; and then it faded. Again the nausea came on; again the succession of blurred views. Eventually the myriad spheres, the water with the leviathans, the forest of vines, each succeeding scene grew more blurred. Their nausea was correspondingly increased, till they were forced to lie down on the ground from illness.
When their giddiness abated, there were blurring views again. There was an impression as though the speed of a train were decreasing as one looks out of the window. And how one view held for several seconds, a vast and wild mountain-range with glaciers and snow peaks by moonlight. When this faded gradually, the scenes began to flick by, more and more rapidly, and grew blurred. Phil and Ione were attacked by nausea until, again, they had to lie down. After that came the familiar succession: the wooden animals, the tangle of vines, the vast sea, the spheres, and more blurred scenes. Then came a pause, with the nebula and the glorious suns swinging into view once again.
"Oh, I understand!" Ione exclaimed; "We're swinging. The safe was so heavy that we swung too violently, too far, and back again--"
"And we keep going till it knocks us out, or till the old cat dies," added Phil.
* * * * *
However, they found that after a number of repetitions of the same program, their giddiness was becoming less; and instead of lying down in the middle of the swing, they could look about. Then it occurred to Phil to time the interval between the nebula and the mountain-range. When the exact halfway point was determined, and after several more swings, they could see dimly the windows and machinery of Tony's laboratory flash by when they passed the middle.
"I don't mean to be a crepe-hanger, but how do you know we will stop at the right point?" Phil asked.
"I don't," replied Ione cheerfully. "But mathematics says so. A freely oscillating segment of space would naturally come to equilibrium in a position parallel to the rest of its own space, would it not?"
There came a swing when they did not reach the nebula on the one hand and the mountain-range on the other. After that, views dropped off from either end of the swing quite rapidly, and before many minutes, they looked into Tony's laboratory a large portion of the time. For many seconds the laboratory held; then it would gradually fade, and reappear again, only to fade into empty nothingness all around.
"The old cat's dead," Phil finally announced.
They sat and stared about them as the laboratory held steady and no further intervening periods of blankness intervened. They both sighed deeply and slumped over on the ground to rest.
"Bang! bang! bang!"
* * * * *
Some sort of hammering woke them up. They looked about them in a daze. It was broad daylight, and things looked queer in the laboratory. There was a smell of scorched rubber and hot oil. Great loops of wire sagged down from above. Several nondescript heaps stood about that might once have been machinery, but now suggested melting snow-men, all fused into heaps. At a table sprawled a queer, misshapen figure that suggested human origin. Both of its hands were burned to cinders to the elbows. Great holes were scorched into the clothes. But the face was recognizable. Tony's playthings had got him at last.
"Looks like something's happened in here!" Phil gasped, in amazement.
"I'll bet it has, too," Ione exclaimed. "This is the first time it occurred to me that our recoil from throwing the safe overboard and the oscillation of our space-segment must have created a tremendous electrical field in the tetra-ordinate apparatus. The reaction is reversible, you see. The field swings the space-segment, or the swinging of the space-segment creates the field. And the field was too much for Tony."
At this point the door fell under the blows of the police, and the raiding squad rushed into the room.
HALL OF MIRRORS
By Fredric Brown
It is a tough decision to make—whether to give up your life so you can live it over again!
For an instant you think it is temporary blindness, this sudden dark that comes in the middle of a bright afternoon.
It must be blindness, you think; could the sun that was tanning you have gone out instantaneously, leaving you in utter blackness?
Then the nerves of your body tell you that you are standing, whereas only a second ago you were sitting comfortably, almost reclining, in a canvas chair. In the patio of a friend's house in Beverly Hills. Talking to Barbara, your fiancée. Looking at Barbara—Barbara in a swim suit—her skin golden tan in the brilliant sunshine, beautiful.
You wore swimming trunks. Now you do not feel them on you; the slight pressure of the elastic waistband is no longer there against your waist. You touch your hands to your hips. You are naked. And standing.
Whatever has happened to you is more than a change to sudden darkness or to sudden blindness.
You raise your hands gropingly before you. They touch a plain smooth surface, a wall. You spread them apart and each hand reaches a corner. You pivot slowly. A second wall, then a third, then a door. You are in a closet about four feet square.
Your hand finds the knob of the door. It turns and you push the door open.
There is light now. The door has opened to a lighted room ... a room that you have never seen before.
It is not large, but it is pleasantly furnished—although the furniture is of a style that is strange to you. Modesty makes you open the door cautiously the rest of the way. But the room is empty of people.
You step into the room, turning to look behind you into the closet, which is now illuminated by light from the room. The closet is and is not a closet; it is the size and shape of one, but it contains nothing, not a single hook, no rod for hanging clothes, no shelf. It is an empty, blank-walled, four-by-four-foot space.
You close the door to it and stand looking around the room. It is about twelve by sixteen feet. There is one door, but it is closed. There are no windows. Five pieces of furniture. Four of them you recognize—more or less. One looks like a very functional desk. One is obviously a chair ... a comfortable-looking one. There is a table, although its top is on several levels instead of only one. Another is a bed, or couch. Something shimmering is lying across it and you walk over and pick the shimmering something up and examine it. It is a garment.
You are naked, so you put it on. Slippers are part way under the bed (or couch) and you slide your feet into them. They fit, and they feel warm and comfortable as nothing you have ever worn on your feet has felt. Like lamb's wool, but softer.
You are dressed now. You look at the door—the only door of the room except that of the closet (closet?) from which you entered it. You walk to the door and before you try the knob, you see the small typewritten sign pasted just above it that reads:
This door has a time lock set to open in one hour. For reasons you will soon understand, it is better that you do not leave this room before then. There is a letter for you on the desk. Please read it.
It is not signed. You look at the desk and see that there is an envelope lying on it.
You do not yet go to take that envelope from the desk and read the letter that must be in it.
Why not? Because you are frightened.
You see other things about the room. The lighting has no source that you can discover. It comes from nowhere. It is not indirect lighting; the ceiling and the walls are not reflecting it at all.
Illustrated by VIDMER
They didn't have lighting like that, back where you came from. What did you mean by back where you came from?
You close your eyes. You tell yourself: I am Norman Hastings. I am an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Southern California. I am twenty-five years old, and this is the year nineteen hundred and fifty-four.
You open your eyes and look again.
They didn't use that style of furniture in Los Angeles—or anywhere else that you know of—in 1954. That thing over in the corner—you can't even guess what it is. So might your grandfather, at your age, have looked at a television set.
You look down at yourself, at the shimmering garment that you found waiting for you. With thumb and forefinger you feel its texture.
It's like nothing you've ever touched before.
I am Norman Hastings. This is nineteen hundred and fifty-four.
Suddenly you must know, and at once.
You go to the desk and pick up the envelope that lies upon it. Your name is typed on the outside: Norman Hastings.
Your hands shake a little as you open it. Do you blame them?
There are several pages, typewritten. Dear Norman, it starts. You turn quickly to the end to look for the signature. It is unsigned.
You turn back and start reading.
"Do not be afraid. There is nothing to fear, but much to explain. Much that you must understand before the time lock opens that door. Much that you must accept and—obey.
"You have already guessed that you are in the future—in what, to you, seems to be the future. The clothes and the room must have told you that. I planned it that way so the shock would not be too sudden, so you would realize it over the course of several minutes rather than read it here—and quite probably disbelieve what you read.
"The 'closet' from which you have just stepped is, as you have by now realized, a time machine. From it you stepped into the world of 2004. The date is April 7th, just fifty years from the time you last remember.
"You cannot return.
"I did this to you and you may hate me for it; I do not know. That is up to you to decide, but it does not matter. What does matter, and not to you alone, is another decision which you must make. I am incapable of making it.
"Who is writing this to you? I would rather not tell you just yet. By the time you have finished reading this, even though it is not signed (for I knew you would look first for a signature), I will not need to tell you who I am. You will know.
"I am seventy-five years of age. I have, in this year 2004, been studying 'time' for thirty of those years. I have completed the first time machine ever built—and thus far, its construction, even the fact that it has been constructed, is my own secret.
"You have just participated in the first major experiment. It will be your responsibility to decide whether there shall ever be any more experiments with it, whether it should be given to the world, or whether it should be destroyed and never used again."
End of the first page. You look up for a moment, hesitating to turn the next page. Already you suspect what is coming.
You turn the page.
"I constructed the first time machine a week ago. My calculations had told me that it would work, but not how it would work. I had expected it to send an object back in time—it works backward in time only, not forward—physically unchanged and intact.
"My first experiment showed me my error. I placed a cube of metal in the machine—it was a miniature of the one you just walked out of—and set the machine to go backward ten years. I flicked the switch and opened the door, expecting to find the cube vanished. Instead I found it had crumbled to powder.
"I put in another cube and sent it two years back. The second cube came back unchanged, except that it was newer, shinier.
"That gave me the answer. I had been expecting the cubes to go back in time, and they had done so, but not in the sense I had expected them to. Those metal cubes had been fabricated about three years previously. I had sent the first one back years before it had existed in its fabricated form. Ten years ago it had been ore. The machine returned it to that state.
"Do you see how our previous theories of time travel have been wrong? We expected to be able to step into a time machine in, say, 2004, set it for fifty years back, and then step out in the year 1954 ... but it does not work that way. The machine does not move in time. Only whatever is within the machine is affected, and then just with relation to itself and not to the rest of the Universe.
"I confirmed this with guinea pigs by sending one six weeks old five weeks back and it came out a baby.
"I need not outline all my experiments here. You will find a record of them in the desk and you can study it later.
"Do you understand now what has happened to you, Norman?"
You begin to understand. And you begin to sweat.
The I who wrote that letter you are now reading is you, yourself at the age of seventy-five, in this year of 2004. You are that seventy-five-year-old man, with your body returned to what it had been fifty years ago, with all the memories of fifty years of living wiped out.
You invented the time machine.
And before you used it on yourself, you made these arrangements to help you orient yourself. You wrote yourself the letter which you are now reading.
But if those fifty years are—to you—gone, what of all your friends, those you loved? What of your parents? What of the girl you are going—were going—to marry?
You read on:
"Yes, you will want to know what has happened. Mom died in 1963, Dad in 1968. You married Barbara in 1956. I am sorry to tell you that she died only three years later, in a plane crash. You have one son. He is still living; his name is Walter; he is now forty-six years old and is an accountant in Kansas City."
Tears come into your eyes and for a moment you can no longer read. Barbara dead—dead for forty-five years. And only minutes ago, in subjective time, you were sitting next to her, sitting in the bright sun in a Beverly Hills patio ...
You force yourself to read again.
"But back to the discovery. You begin to see some of its implications. You will need time to think to see all of them.
"It does not permit time travel as we have thought of time travel, but it gives us immortality of a sort. Immortality of the kind I have temporarily given us.
"Is it good? Is it worth while to lose the memory of fifty years of one's life in order to return one's body to relative youth? The only way I can find out is to try, as soon as I have finished writing this and made my other preparations.
"You will know the answer.
"But before you decide, remember that there is another problem, more important than the psychological one. I mean overpopulation.
"If our discovery is given to the world, if all who are old or dying can make themselves young again, the population will almost double every generation. Nor would the world—not even our own relatively enlightened country—be willing to accept compulsory birth control as a solution.
"Give this to the world, as the world is today in 2004, and within a generation there will be famine, suffering, war. Perhaps a complete collapse of civilization.
"Yes, we have reached other planets, but they are not suitable for colonizing. The stars may be our answer, but we are a long way from reaching them. When we do, someday, the billions of habitable planets that must be out there will be our answer ... our living room. But until then, what is the answer?
"Destroy the machine? But think of the countless lives it can save, the suffering it can prevent. Think of what it would mean to a man dying of cancer. Think ..."
Think. You finish the letter and put it down.
You think of Barbara dead for forty-five years. And of the fact that you were married to her for three years and that those years are lost to you.
Fifty years lost. You damn the old man of seventy-five whom you became and who has done this to you ... who has given you this decision to make.
Bitterly, you know what the decision must be. You think that he knew, too, and realize that he could safely leave it in your hands. Damn him, he should have known.
Too valuable to destroy, too dangerous to give.
The other answer is painfully obvious.
You must be custodian of this discovery and keep it secret until it is safe to give, until mankind has expanded to the stars and has new worlds to populate, or until, even without that, he has reached a state of civilization where he can avoid overpopulation by rationing births to the number of accidental—or voluntary—deaths.
If neither of those things has happened in another fifty years (and are they likely so soon?), then you, at seventy-five, will be writing another letter like this one. You will be undergoing another experience similar to the one you're going through now. And making the same decision, of course.
Why not? You'll be the same person again.
Time and again, to preserve this secret until Man is ready for it.
How often will you again sit at a desk like this one, thinking the thoughts you are thinking now, feeling the grief you now feel?
There is a click at the door and you know that the time lock has opened, that you are now free to leave this room, free to start a new life for yourself in place of the one you have already lived and lost.
But you are in no hurry now to walk directly through that door.
You sit there, staring straight ahead of you blindly, seeing in your mind's eye the vista of a set of facing mirrors, like those in an old-fashioned barber shop, reflecting the same thing over and over again, diminishing into far distance.
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS
by Russell Burton
Does your wife call you Pumpkinhead? Well, maybe it's not an insult; it might be a pet name. Ah--but whose pet name?
As his coach sped through dusk-darkened Jersey meadows, Ronald Lovegear, fourteen years with Allied Electronix, embraced his burden with both arms, silently cursing the engineer who was deliberately rocking the train. In his thin chest he nursed the conviction that someday there would be an intelligent robot at the throttle of the 5:10 to Philadelphia.
He carefully moved one hand and took a notebook from his pocket. That would be a good thing to mention at the office next Monday.
Again he congratulated himself for having induced his superiors to let him take home the company's most highly developed mechanism to date. He had already forgiven himself for the little white lie that morning.
"Pascal," he had told them, "is a little weak on square roots." That had done it!
Old Hardwick would never permit an Allied computer to hit the market that was not the absolute master of square roots. If Lovegear wanted to work on Pascal on his own time it was fine with the boss.
Ronald Lovegear consulted his watch. He wondered if his wife would be on time. He had told Corinne twice over the phone to bring the station wagon to meet him. But she had been so forgetful lately. It was probably the new house; six rooms to keep up without a maid was quite a chore. His pale eyes blinked. He had a few ideas along that line too. He smiled and gave the crate a gentle pat.
* * * * *
Corinne was at the station, and she had brought the station wagon. Lovegear managed to get the crate to the stairs of the coach where he consented to the assistance of a porter.
"It's not really heavy," he told Corinne as he and the porter waddled through the crowd. "Actually only 57 pounds, four ounces. Aluminum casing, you know ..."
"No, I didn't ..." began Corinne.
"But it's delicate," he continued. "If I should drop this ..." He shuddered.
After the crate had been placed lengthwise in the rear of the station wagon, Corinne watched Ronald tuck a blanket around it.
"It's not very cold, Ronald."
"I don't want it to get bounced around," he said. "Now, please, Corinne, do drive carefully." Not until she had driven half a block did he kiss her on the cheek. Then he glanced anxiously over his shoulder at the rear seat. Once he thought Corinne hit a rut that could have been avoided.
Long after Corinne had retired that night she heard Ronald pounding with a brass hammer down in his den. At first she had insisted he take the crate out to his workshop. He looked at her with scientific aloofness and asked if she had the slightest conception of what "this is worth?" She hadn't, and she went to bed. It was only another one of his gestures which was responsible for these weird dreams. That night she dreamed Ronald brought home a giant octopus which insisted on doing the dishes for her. In the morning she woke up feeling unwanted.
Downstairs Ronald had already put on the coffee. He was wearing his robe and the pinched greyness of his face told Corinne he had been up half the night. He poured coffee for her, smiling wanly. "If I have any commitments today, Corinne, will you please see that they are taken care of?"
"But you were supposed to get the wallpaper for the guest room...."
"I know, I know, dear. But time is so short. They might want Pascal back any day. For the next week or two I shall want to devote most of my time ..."
"Pascal?"
"Yes. The machine--the computer." He smiled at her ignorance. "We usually name the expensive jobs. You see, a computer of this nature is really the heart and soul of the mechanical man we will construct."
Corinne didn't see, but in a few minutes she strolled toward the den, balancing her coffee in both hands. With one elbow she eased the door open. There it was: an innocent polished cabinet reaching up to her shoulders. Ronald had removed one of the plates from its side and she peeped into the section where the heart and soul might be located. She saw only an unanatomical array of vacuum tubes and electrical relays.
She felt Ronald at her back. "It looks like the inside of a juke box," she said.
He beamed. "The same relay systems used in the simple juke box are incorporated in a computer." He placed one hand lovingly on the top of the cabinet.
"But, Ronald--it doesn't even resemble a--a mechanical man?"
"That's because it doesn't have any appendages as yet. You know, arms and legs. That's a relatively simple adjustment." He winked at Corinne with a great air of complicity. "And I have some excellent ideas along that line. Now, run along, because I'll be busy most of the day."
* * * * *
Corinne ran along. She spent most of the day shopping for week-end necessities. On an irrational last-minute impulse--perhaps an unconscious surrender to the machine age--she dug in the grocery deep freeze and brought out a couple of purple steaks.
That evening she had to call Ronald three times for dinner, and when he came out of the den she noticed that he closed the door the way one does upon a small child. He chattered about inconsequential matters all through dinner. Corinne knew that his work was going smoothly. A few minutes later she was to know how smoothly.
It started when she began to put on her apron to do the dishes. "Let that go for now, dear," Ronald said, taking the apron from her. He went into the den, returning with a small black box covered with push buttons. "Now observe carefully," he said, his voice pitched high.
He pushed one of the buttons, waited a second with his ear cocked toward the den, then pushed another.
Corinne heard the turning of metal against metal, and she slowly turned her head.
"Oh!" She suppressed a shriek, clutching Ronald's arm so tightly he almost dropped the control box.
Pascal was walking under his own effort, considerably taller now with the round, aluminum legs Ronald had given him. Two metal arms also hung at the sides of the cabinet. One of these rose stiffly, as though for balance. Corinne's mouth opened as she watched the creature jerk awkwardly across the living room.
"Oh, Ronald! The fishbowl!"
Ronald stabbed knowingly at several buttons.
Pascal pivoted toward them, but not before his right arm swung out and, almost contemptuously, brushed the fishbowl to the floor.
Corinne closed her eyes at the crash. Then she scooped up several little golden bodies and rushed for the kitchen. When she returned Ronald was picking up pieces of glass and dabbing at the pool of water with one of her bathroom towels. Pascal, magnificently aloof, was standing in the center of the mess.
"I'm sorry." Ronald looked up. "It was my fault. I got confused on the buttons."
But Corinne's glances toward the rigid Pascal held no indictment. She was only mystified. There was something wrong here.
"But Ronald, he's so ugly without a head. I thought that all robots--"
"Oh, no," he explained, "we would put heads on them for display purposes only. Admittedly that captures the imagination of the public. That little adapter shaft at the top could be the neck, of course...."
He waved Corinne aside and continued his experiments with the home-made robot. Pascal moved in controlled spasms around the living room. Once, he walked just a little too close to the floor-length window--and Corinne stood up nervously. But Ronald apparently had mastered the little black box.
With complete confidence Corinne went into the kitchen to do the dishes. Not until she was elbow deep in suds did she recall her dreams about the octopus. She looked over her shoulder, and the curious, unwanted feeling came again.
* * * * *
The following afternoon--after Ronald had cancelled their Sunday drive into the country--Pascal, with constant exhortations by Ronald at the black box, succeeded in vacuum cleaning the entire living room. Ronald was ecstatic.
"Now do you understand?" he asked Corinne. "A mechanical servant! Think of it! Of course mass production may be years away, but ..."
"Everyone will have Thursday nights off," said Corinne--but Ronald was already jabbing at buttons as Pascal dragged the vacuum cleaner back to its niche in the closet.
Later, Corinne persuaded Ronald to take her to a movie, but not until the last moment was she certain that Pascal wasn't going to drag along.
Every afternoon of the following week Ronald Lovegear called from the laboratory in New York to ask how Pascal was getting along.
"Just fine," Corinne told him on Thursday afternoon. "But he certainly ruined some of the tomato plants in the garden. He just doesn't seem to hoe in a straight line. Are you certain it's the green button I push?"
"It's probably one of the pressure regulators," interrupted Ronald. "I'll check it when I get home." Corinne suspected by his lowered voice that Mr. Hardwick had walked into the lab.
That night Pascal successfully washed and dried the dishes, cracking only one cup in the process. Corinne spent the rest of the evening sitting in the far corner of the living room, thumbing the pages of a magazine.
On the following afternoon--prompted perhaps by that perverse female trait which demands completion of all projects once started--Corinne lingered for several minutes in the vegetable department at the grocery. She finally picked out a fresh, round and blushing pumpkin.
Later in her kitchen, humming a little tune under her breath, Corinne deftly maneuvered a paring knife to transform the pumpkin into a very reasonable facsimile of a man's head. She placed the pumpkin over the tiny shaft between Pascal's box-shaped shoulders and stepped back.
She smiled at the moon-faced idiot grinning back at her. He was complete, and not bad-looking! But just before she touched the red button once and the blue button twice--which sent Pascal stumbling out to the backyard to finish weeding the circle of pansies before dinner--she wondered about the gash that was his mouth. She distinctly remembered carving it so that the ends curved upward into a frozen and quite harmless smile. But one end of the toothless grin seemed to sag a little, like the cynical smile of one who knows his powers have been underestimated.
Corinne would not have had to worry about her husband's reaction to the new vegetable-topped Pascal. Ronald accepted the transformation good-naturedly, thinking that a little levity, once in a while, was a good thing.
"And after all," said Corinne later that evening, "I'm the one who has to spend all day in the house with ..." She lowered her voice: "With Pascal."
But Ronald wasn't listening. He retired to his den to finish the plans for the mass production of competent mechanical men. One for every home in America.... He fell asleep with the thought.
* * * * *
Corinne and Pascal spent the next two weeks going through pretty much the same routine. He, methodically jolting through the household chores; she, walking aimlessly from room to room, smoking too many cigarettes. She began to think of Pascal as a boarder. Strange--at first he had been responsible for that unwanted feeling. But now his helpfulness around the house had lightened her burden. And he was so cheerful all the time! After living with Ronald's preoccupied frown for seven years ...
After luncheon one day, when Pascal neglected to shut off the garden hose, she caught herself scolding him as if he were human. Was that a shadow from the curtain waving in the breeze, or did she see a hurt look flit across the mouth of the pumpkin? Corinne put out her hand and patted Pascal's cylindrical wrist.
It was warm--flesh warm.
She hurried upstairs and stood breathing heavily with her back to the door. A little later she thought she heard someone--someone with a heavy step--moving around downstairs.
"I left the control box down there," she thought. "Of course, it's absurd...."
At four o'clock she went slowly down the stairs to start Ronald's dinner. Pascal was standing by the refrigerator, exactly where she had left him. Not until she had started to peel the potatoes did she notice the little bouquet of pansies in the center of the table.
Corinne felt she needed a strong cup of tea. She put the water on and placed a cup on the kitchen table. Not until she was going to sit down did she decide that perhaps Pascal should be in the other room.
She pressed the red button, the one which should turn him around, and the blue button, which should make him walk into the living room. She heard the little buzz of mechanical life as Pascal began to move. But he did not go into the other room! He was holding a chair for her, and she sat down rather heavily. A sudden rush of pleasure reddened her cheeks. Not since sorority days ...
Before Pascal's arms moved away she touched his wrist again, softly, only this time her hand lingered. And his wrist was warm!
* * * * *
"When do they want Pascal back at the lab?" she asked Ronald at dinner that evening, trying to keep her voice casual.
Ronald smiled. "I think I might have him indefinitely, dear. I've got Hardwick convinced I'm working on something revolutionary." He stopped. "Oh, Corinne! You've spilled coffee all over yourself."
The following night Ronald was late in getting home from work. It was raining outside the Newark station and the cabs deliberately evaded him. He finally caught a bus, which deposited him one block from his house. He cut through the back alley, hurrying through the rain. Just before he started up the stairs he glanced through the lighted kitchen window. He stopped, gripping the railing for support.
In the living room were Pascal and Corinne. Pascal was reclining leisurely in the fireside chair; Corinne was standing in front of him. It was the expression on her face which stopped Ronald Lovegear. The look was a compound of restraint and compulsion, the reflection of some deep struggle in Corinne's soul. Then she suddenly leaned forward and pressed her lips to Pascal's full, fleshy pumpkin mouth. Slowly, one of Pascal's aluminum arms moved up and encircled her waist.
Mr. Lovegear stepped back into the rain. He stood there for several minutes. The rain curled around the brim of his hat, dropped to his face, and rolled down his cheeks with the slow agitation of tears.
When, finally, he walked around to the front and stamped heavily up the stairs, Corinne greeted him with a flush in her cheeks. Ronald told her that he didn't feel "quite up to dinner. Just coffee, please." When it was ready he sipped slowly, watching Corinne's figure as she moved around the room. She avoided looking at the aluminum figure in the chair.
Ronald put his coffee down, walked over to Pascal, and, gripping him behind the shoulders, dragged him into the den.
Corinne stood looking at the closed door and listened to the furious pounding.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later Ronald came out and went straight to the phone.
"Yes! Immediately!" he told the man at the freight office. While he sat there waiting Corinne walked upstairs.
Ronald did not offer to help the freight men drag the box outside. When they had gone he went into the den and came back with the pumpkin. He opened the back door and hurled it out into the rain. It cleared the back fence and rolled down the alley stopping in a small puddle in the cinders.
After a while the water level reached the mouth and there was a soft choking sound. The boy who found it the next morning looked at the mouth and wondered why anyone would carve such a sad Jack-O'-Lantern.
THE END
HARD GUY
by H. B. Carleton
There will be fine, glittering, streamlined automobiles in 2000 A.D. Possibly they will run themselves while the driver sits back with an old-fashioned in his hands. Perhaps they will carry folks down the highways at ninety miles an hour in perfect safety. But picking up a hitch-hiker will still be as dangerous as it is today.
He was standing at the side of the glassite super-highway, his arm half-raised, thumb pointed in the same direction as that of the approaching rocket car. Ordinarily Frederick Marden would have passed a hitch-hiker without stopping, but there was something in the bearing and appearance of this one that caused him to apply his brakes.
Marden opened the door next to the vacant seat beside him.
"Going my way?" he asked.
A pair of steady, unsmiling blue eyes looked him over. "Yeah."
"All right, then. Hop in."
The hitch-hiker took his time. He slid into the seat with casual deliberateness and slammed the car door shut. The rocket car got under way once more.
They rode in silence for half a mile or so. Finally Marden glanced questioningly at his companion's expressionless profile.
"Where are you headed for?" he asked.
"Dentonville." He spoke from the corner of his mouth, without turning his head.
"Oh, yes. That's the next town, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
Not very communicative, reflected Marden, noticing the rather ragged condition of the other's celo-lex clothing.
"Have much trouble getting rides?"
The passenger turned his head, his blue eyes without emotion.
"Yeah. Most guys are leery about pickin' up hitch-hikers. Scared they'll get robbed."
Marden pursed his lips, nodded.
"Something to that, all right. I'm usually pretty careful myself; but I figured you looked okay."
"Can't always tell by looks," was the calm reply. "'Course us guys mostly pick out some guy with a swell atomic-mobile if we're goin' to pull a stick-up. When we see a old heap like this one there's usually not enough dough to make it pay."
Marden felt his jaw drop.
"Say, you sound, like you go in for that sort of thing! I'm telling you right now, I haven't enough cash on me to make it worth your while. I'm just a salesman, trying to get along."
"You got nothin' to worry about," his passenger assured him. "Stick-ups ain't my racket."
An audible sigh of relief escaped Marden.
"I'm certainly glad to hear that! What is your--er--racket, anyway?"
The blue eyes frosted over.
"Look, chum, sometimes it ain't exactly healthy to ask questions like that."
"Pardon me," Marden said hastily. "I didn't mean anything. It's none of my business, of course."
* * * * *
The calm eyes flicked over his contrite expression.
"Skip it, pal. You look like a right guy. I'll put you next to somethin'. Only keep your lip buttoned, see?"
"Oh, absolutely."
"I'm Mike Eagen--head of the Strato Rovers."
"No!" Marden was plainly awed. "The Strato Rovers, eh? I've heard of them, all right."
The other nodded complacently.
"Yeah. We're about the toughest mob this side of Mars. We don't bother honest people, though. We get ours from the crooks and racketeers. They can't squeal to the Interplanetary Police."
"There's a lot in what you say," agreed Marden. "And of course that puts your ... mob in the Robin Hood class."
"Robin Hood--nuts! That guy was a dope! Runnin' around with bows and arrows. Why, we got a mystery ray that paralyzes anybody that starts up with us. They're all right when it wears off, but by that time we get away."
Marden was properly impressed.
"A mystery ray! With a weapon like that, you should be able to walk into a bank and clean it out without any trouble."
His passenger's lips curled.
"I told you, we don't bother honest people. We even help the S.P. sometimes. Right now we're workin' with the Earth-Mars G-men in roundin' up a gang of fifth-columnists that are plannin' on takin' over the gov'ment. They're led by the Black Hornet. This Black Hornet goes around pretendin' like he's a big business man, but he's really a internatural spy."
"A--what?"
"A internatural spy," repeated Marden's companion, shortly. "The E-M G-men say he's the most dangerous man in the country. But he won't last long with the Strato Rovers on his trail."
Marden nodded.
"I can believe that. Tell me, Eagen, what are you doing out here around a small Earth town like Dentonville?"
"The gov'ment's buildin' some kind of a ammunition place near here, and I understand the Black Hornet's figurin' on wreckin' everything. 'Course he won't get away with it."
Scattered plasticade houses on either side of the road indicated they had reached the outskirts of Dentonville. Mike Eagen pointed ahead to a small white house set back among a cluster of trees.
"There's where I'm holed up. Drop me off in front."
A young woman in a faded blue satin-glass house-dress was standing at the gate of the white picket fence. She watched in silence as the passenger stepped from the rocket car and lifted his hand to the driver in careless farewell.
"Thanks for the lift, chum," said Mike Eagen.
"Not at all," replied Marden. "Glad to have been of service to Mike Eagen."
The woman smiled to him.
"He's told you his name, I see."
Marden lifted his hat.
"Indeed he has."
"Michael is all right," she said. "I do think, though, that he reads too many Buck Gordon Interplanetary comic books for a boy of eleven."
THE END
THE PERFECTIONISTS
by Arnold Castle
Is there something wrong with you? Do you fail to fit in with your group? Nervous, anxious, ill-at-ease? Happy about it? Lucky you!
Frank Pembroke sat behind the desk of his shabby little office over Lemark's Liquors in downtown Los Angeles and waited for his first customer. He had been in business for a week and as yet had had no callers. Therefore, it was with a mingled sense of excitement and satisfaction that he greeted the tall, dark, smooth-faced figure that came up the stairs and into the office shortly before noon.
"Good day, sir," said Pembroke with an amiable smile. "I see my advertisement has interested you. Please stand in that corner for just a moment."
Opening the desk drawer, which was almost empty, Pembroke removed an automatic pistol fitted with a silencer. Pointing it at the amazed customer, he fired four .22 caliber longs into the narrow chest. Then he made a telephone call and sat down to wait. He wondered how long it would be before his next client would arrive.
* * * * *
The series of events leading up to Pembroke's present occupation had commenced on a dismal, overcast evening in the South Pacific a year earlier. Bound for Sydney, two days out of Valparaiso, the Colombian tramp steamer Elena Mia had encountered a dense greenish fog which seemed vaguely redolent of citrus trees. Standing on the forward deck, Pembroke was one of the first to perceive the peculiar odor and to spot the immense gray hulk wallowing in the murky distance.
Then the explosion had come, from far below the waterline, and the decks were awash with frantic crewmen, officers, and the handful of passengers. Only two lifeboats were launched before the Elena Mia went down. Pembroke was in the second. The roar of the sinking ship was the last thing he heard for some time.
Pembroke came as close to being a professional adventurer as one can in these days of regimented travel, organized peril, and political restriction. He had made for himself a substantial fortune through speculation in a great variety of properties, real and otherwise. Life had given him much and demanded little, which was perhaps the reason for his restiveness.
* * * * *
Loyalty to person or to people was a trait Pembroke had never recognized in himself, nor had it ever been expected of him. And yet he greatly envied those staunch patriots and lovers who could find it in themselves to elevate the glory and safety of others above that of themselves.
Lacking such loyalties, Pembroke adapted quickly to the situation in which he found himself when he regained consciousness. He awoke in a small room in what appeared to be a typical modern American hotel. The wallet in his pocket contained exactly what it should, approximately three hundred dollars. His next thought was of food. He left the room and descended via the elevator to the restaurant. Here he observed that it was early afternoon. Ordering a full dinner, for he was unusually hungry, he began to study the others in the restaurant.
Many of the faces seemed familiar; the crew of the ship, probably. He also recognized several of the passengers. However, he made no attempt to speak to them. After his meal, he bought a good corona and went for a walk. His situation could have been any small western American seacoast city. He heard the hiss of the ocean in the direction the afternoon sun was taking. In his full-gaited walk, he was soon approaching the beach.
On the sand he saw a number of sun bathers. One in particular, an attractive woman of about thirty, tossed back her long, chestnut locks and gazed up intently at Pembroke as he passed. Seldom had he enjoyed so ingenuous an invitation. He halted and stared down at her for a few moments.
"You are looking for someone?" she inquired.
"Much of the time," said the man.
"Could it be me?"
"It could be."
"Yet you seem unsure," she said.
Pembroke smiled, uneasily. There was something not entirely normal about her conversation. Though the rest of her compensated for that.
"Tell me what's wrong with me," she went on urgently. "I'm not good enough, am I? I mean, there's something wrong with the way I look or act. Isn't there? Please help me, please!"
"You're not casual enough, for one thing," said Pembroke, deciding to play along with her for the moment. "You're too tense. Also you're a bit knock-kneed, not that it matters. Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"Yes, yes--I mean, I suppose so. I can try to be more casual. But I don't know what to do about my knees," she said wistfully, staring across at the smooth, tan limbs. "Do you think I'm okay otherwise? I mean, as a whole I'm not so bad, am I? Oh, please tell me."
"How about talking it over at supper tonight?" Pembroke proposed. "Maybe with less distraction I'll have a better picture of you--as a whole."
"Oh, that's very generous of you," the woman told him. She scribbled a name and an address on a small piece of paper and handed it to him. "Any time after six," she said.
Pembroke left the beach and walked through several small specialty shops. He tried to get the woman off his mind, but the oddness of her conversation continued to bother him. She was right about being different, but it was her concern about being different that made her so. How to explain that to her?
* * * * *
Then he saw the weird little glass statuette among the usual bric-a-brac. It rather resembled a ground hog, had seven fingers on each of its six limbs, and smiled up at him as he stared.
"Can I help you, sir?" a middle-aged saleswoman inquired. "Oh, good heavens, whatever is that thing doing here?"
Pembroke watched with lifted eyebrows as the clerk whisked the bizarre statuette underneath the counter.
"What the hell was that?" Pembroke demanded.
"Oh, you know--or don't you? Oh, my," she concluded, "are you one of the--strangers?"
"And if I were?"
"Well, I'd certainly appreciate it if you'd tell me how I walk."
* * * * *
She came around in front of the counter and strutted back and forth a few times.
"They tell me I lean too far forward," she confided. "But I should think you'd fall down if you didn't."
"Don't try to go so fast and you won't fall down," suggested Pembroke. "You're in too much of a hurry. Also those fake flowers on your blouse make you look frumpy."
"Well, I'm supposed to look frumpy," the woman retorted. "That's the type of person I am. But you can look frumpy and still walk natural, can't you? Everyone says you can."
"Well, they've got a point," said Pembroke. "Incidentally, just where are we, anyway? What city is this?"
"Puerto Pacifico," she told him. "Isn't that a lovely name? It means peaceful port. In Spanish."
That was fine. At least he now knew where he was. But as he left the shop he began checking off every west coast state, city, town, and inlet. None, to the best of his knowledge, was called Puerto Pacifico.
He headed for the nearest service station and asked for a map. The attendant gave him one which showed the city, but nothing beyond.
"Which way is it to San Francisco?" asked Pembroke.
"That all depends on where you are," the boy returned.
"Okay, then where am I?"
"Pardon me, there's a customer," the boy said. "This is Puerto Pacifico."
Pembroke watched him hurry off to service a car with a sense of having been given the runaround. To his surprise, the boy came back a few minutes later after servicing the automobile.
"Say, I've just figured out who you are," the youngster told him. "I'd sure appreciate it if you'd give me a little help on my lingo. Also, you gas up the car first, then try to sell 'em the oil--right?"
"Right," said Pembroke wearily. "What's wrong with your lingo? Other than the fact that it's not colloquial enough."
"Not enough slang, huh? Well, I guess I'll have to concentrate on that. How about the smile?"
"Perfect," Pembroke told him.
"Yeah?" said the boy delightedly. "Say, come back again, huh? I sure appreciate the help. Keep the map."
"Thanks. One more thing," Pembroke said. "What's over that way--outside the city?"
"Sand."
"How about that way?" he asked, pointing north. "And that way?" pointing south.
"More of the same."
"Any railroads?"
"That we ain't got."
"Buses? Airlines?"
The kid shook his head.
"Some city."
"Yeah, it's kinda isolated. A lot of ships dock here, though."
"All cargo ships, I'll bet. No passengers," said Pembroke.
"Right," said the attendant, giving with his perfect smile.
"No getting out of here, is there?"
"That's for sure," the boy said, walking away to wait on another customer. "If you don't like the place, you've had it."
* * * * *
Pembroke returned to the hotel. Going to the bar, he recognized one of the Elena Mia's paying passengers. He was a short, rectangular little man in his fifties named Spencer. He sat in a booth with three young women, all lovely, all effusive. The topic of the conversation turned out to be precisely what Pembroke had predicted.
"Well, Louisa, I'd say your only fault is the way you keep wigglin' your shoulders up 'n' down. Why'n'sha try holdin' 'em straight?"
"I thought it made me look sexy," the redhead said petulantly.
"Just be yourself, gal," Spencer drawled, jabbing her intimately with a fat elbow, "and you'll qualify."
"Me, me," the blonde with a feather cut was insisting. "What is wrong with me?"
"You're perfect, sweetheart," he told her, taking her hand.
"Ah, come on," she pleaded. "Everyone tells me I chew gum with my mouth open. Don't you hate that?"
"Naw, that's part of your charm," Spencer assured her.
"How 'bout me, sugar," asked the girl with the coal black hair.
"Ah, you're perfect, too. You are all perfect. I've never seen such a collection of dolls as parade around this here city. C'mon, kids--how 'bout another round?"
But the dolls had apparently lost interest in him. They got up one by one and walked out of the bar. Pembroke took his rum and tonic and moved over to Spencer's booth.
"Okay if I join you?"
"Sure," said the fat man. "Wonder what the hell got into those babes?"
"You said they were perfect. They know they're not. You've got to be rough with them in this town," said Pembroke. "That's all they want from us."
"Mister, you've been doing some thinkin', I can see," said Spencer, peering at him suspiciously. "Maybe you've figured out where we are."
"Your bet's as good as mine," said Pembroke. "It's not Wellington, and it's not Brisbane, and it's not Long Beach, and it's not Tahiti. There are a lot of places it's not. But where the hell it is, you tell me.
"And, by the way," he added, "I hope you like it in Puerto Pacifico. Because there isn't any place to go from here and there isn't any way to get there if there were."
"Pardon me, gentlemen, but I'm Joe Valencia, manager of the hotel. I would be very grateful if you would give me a few minutes of honest criticism."
"Ah, no, not you, too," groaned Spencer. "Look, Joe, what's the gag?"
"You are newcomers, Mr. Spencer," Valencia explained. "You are therefore in an excellent position to point out our faults as you see them."
"Well, so what?" demanded Spencer. "I've got more important things to do than to worry about your troubles. You look okay to me."
"Mr. Valencia," said Pembroke. "I've noticed that you walk with a very slight limp. If you have a bad leg, I should think you would do better to develop a more pronounced limp. Otherwise, you may appear to be self-conscious about it."
* * * * *
Spencer opened his mouth to protest, but saw with amazement that it was exactly this that Valencia was seeking. Pembroke was amused at his companion's reaction but observed that Spencer still failed to see the point.
"Also, there is a certain effeminateness in the way in which you speak," said Pembroke. "Try to be a little more direct, a little more brusque. Speak in a monotone. It will make you more acceptable."
"Thank you so much," said the manager. "There is much food for thought in what you have said, Mr. Pembroke. However, Mr. Spencer, your value has failed to prove itself. You have only yourself to blame. Cooperation is all we require of you."
Valencia left. Spencer ordered another martini. Neither he nor Pembroke spoke for several minutes.
"Somebody's crazy around here," the fat man muttered after a few moments. "Is it me, Frank?"
"No. You just don't belong here, in this particular place," said Pembroke thoughtfully. "You're the wrong type. But they couldn't know that ahead of time. The way they operate it's a pretty hit-or-miss operation. But they don't care one bit about us, Spencer. Consider the men who went down with the ship. That was just part of the game."
"What the hell are you sayin'?" asked Spencer in disbelief. "You figure they sunk the ship? Valencia and the waitress and the three babes? Ah, come on."
"It's what you think that will determine what you do, Spencer. I suggest you change your attitude; play along with them for a few days till the picture becomes a little clearer to you. We'll talk about it again then."
Pembroke rose and started out of the bar. A policeman entered and walked directly to Spencer's table. Loitering at the juke box, Pembroke overheard the conversation.
"You Spencer?"
"That's right," said the fat man sullenly.
"What don't you like about me? The truth, buddy."
"Ah, hell! Nothin' wrong with you at all, and nothin'll make me say there is," said Spencer.
"You're the guy, all right. Too bad, Mac," said the cop.
Pembroke heard the shots as he strolled casually out into the brightness of the hotel lobby. While he waited for the elevator, he saw them carrying the body into the street. How many others, he wondered, had gone out on their backs during their first day in Puerto Pacifico?
* * * * *
Pembroke shaved, showered, and put on the new suit and shirt he had bought. Then he took Mary Ann, the woman he had met on the beach, out to dinner. She would look magnificent even when fully clothed, he decided, and the pale chartreuse gown she wore hardly placed her in that category. Her conversation seemed considerably more normal after the other denizens of Puerto Pacifico Pembroke had listened to that afternoon.
After eating they danced for an hour, had a few more drinks, then went to Pembroke's room. He still knew nothing about her and had almost exhausted his critical capabilities, but not once had she become annoyed with him. She seemed to devour every factual point of imperfection about herself that Pembroke brought to her attention. And, fantastically enough, she actually appeared to have overcome every little imperfection he had been able to communicate to her.
It was in the privacy of his room that Pembroke became aware of just how perfect, physically, Mary Ann was. Too perfect. No freckles or moles anywhere on the visible surface of her brown skin, which was more than a mere sampling. Furthermore, her face and body were meticulously symmetrical. And she seemed to be wholly ambidextrous.
"With so many beautiful women in Puerto Pacifico," said Pembroke probingly, "I find it hard to understand why there are so few children."
"Yes, children are decorative, aren't they," said Mary Ann. "I do wish there were more of them."
"Why not have a couple of your own?" he asked.
"Oh, they're only given to maternal types. I'd never get one. Anyway, I won't ever marry," she said. "I'm the paramour type."
It was obvious that the liquor had been having some effect. Either that, or she had a basic flaw of loquacity that no one else had discovered. Pembroke decided he would have to cover his tracks carefully.
"What type am I?" he asked.
"Silly, you're real. You're not a type at all."
"Mary Ann, I love you very much," Pembroke murmured, gambling everything on this one throw. "When you go to Earth I'll miss you terribly."
"Oh, but you'll be dead by then," she pouted. "So I mustn't fall in love with you. I don't want to be miserable."
"If I pretended I was one of you, if I left on the boat with you, they'd let me go to Earth with you. Wouldn't they?"
"Oh, yes, I'm sure they would."
"Mary Ann, you have two other flaws I feel I should mention."
"Yes? Please tell me."
"In the first place," said Pembroke, "you should be willing to fall in love with me even if it will eventually make you unhappy. How can you be the paramour type if you refuse to fall in love foolishly? And when you have fallen in love, you should be very loyal."
"I'll try," she said unsurely. "What else?"
"The other thing is that, as my mistress, you must never mention me to anyone. It would place me in great danger."
"I'll never tell anyone anything about you," she promised.
"Now try to love me," Pembroke said, drawing her into his arms and kissing with little pleasure the smooth, warm perfection of her tanned cheeks. "Love me my sweet, beautiful, affectionate Mary Ann. My paramour."
Making love to Mary Ann was something short of ecstasy. Not for any obvious reason, but because of subtle little factors that make a woman a woman. Mary Ann had no pulse. Mary Ann did not perspire. Mary Ann did not fatigue gradually but all at once. Mary Ann breathed regularly under all circumstances. Mary Ann talked and talked and talked. But then, Mary Ann was not a human being.
When she left the hotel at midnight, Pembroke was quite sure that she understood his plan and that she was irrevocably in love with him. Tomorrow might bring his death, but it might also ensure his escape. After forty-two years of searching for a passion, for a cause, for a loyalty, Frank Pembroke had at last found his. Earth and the human race that peopled it. And Mary Ann would help him to save it.
* * * * *
The next morning Pembroke talked to Valencia about hunting. He said that he planned to go shooting out on the desert which surrounded the city. Valencia told him that there were no living creatures anywhere but in the city. Pembroke said he was going out anyway.
He picked up Mary Ann at her apartment and together they went to a sporting goods store. As he guessed there was a goodly selection of firearms, despite the fact that there was nothing to hunt and only a single target range within the city. Everything, of course, had to be just like Earth. That, after all, was the purpose of Puerto Pacifico.
By noon they had rented a jeep and were well away from the city. Pembroke and Mary Ann took turns firing at the paper targets they had purchased. At twilight they headed back to the city. On the outskirts, where the sand and soil were mixed and no footprints would be left, Pembroke hopped off. Mary Ann would go straight to the police and report that Pembroke had attacked her and that she had shot him. If necessary, she would conduct the authorities to the place where they had been target shooting, but would be unable to locate the spot where she had buried the body. Why had she buried it? Because at first she was not going to report the incident. She was frightened. It was not airtight, but there would probably be no further investigation. And they certainly would not prosecute Mary Ann for killing an Earthman.
Now Pembroke had himself to worry about. The first step was to enter smoothly into the new life he had planned. It wouldn't be so comfortable as the previous one, but should be considerably safer. He headed slowly for the "old" part of town, aging his clothes against buildings and fences as he walked. He had already torn the collar of the shirt and discarded his belt. By morning his beard would grow to blacken his face. And he would look weary and hungry and aimless. Only the last would be a deception.
* * * * *
Two weeks later Pembroke phoned Mary Ann. The police had accepted her story without even checking. And when, when would she be seeing him again? He had aroused her passion and no amount of long-distance love could requite it. Soon, he assured her, soon.
"Because, after all, you do owe me something," she added.
And that was bad because it sounded as if she had been giving some womanly thought to the situation. A little more of that and she might go to the police again, this time for vengeance.
Twice during his wanderings Pembroke had seen the corpses of Earthmen being carted out of buildings. They had to be Earthmen because they bled. Mary Ann had admitted that she did not. There would be very few Earthmen left in Puerto Pacifico, and it would be simple enough to locate him if he were reported as being on the loose. There was no out but to do away with Mary Ann.
Pembroke headed for the beach. He knew she invariably went there in the afternoon. He loitered around the stalls where hot dogs and soft drinks were sold, leaning against a post in the hot sun, hat pulled down over his forehead. Then he noticed that people all about him were talking excitedly. They were discussing a ship. It was leaving that afternoon. Anyone who could pass the interview would be sent to Earth.
Pembroke had visited the docks every day, without being able to learn when the great exodus would take place. Yet he was certain the first lap would be by water rather than by spaceship, since no one he had talked to in the city had ever heard of spaceships. In fact, they knew very little about their masters.
Now the ship had arrived and was to leave shortly. If there was any but the most superficial examination, Pembroke would no doubt be discovered and exterminated. But since no one seemed concerned about anything but his own speech and behavior, he assumed that they had all qualified in every other respect. The reason for transporting Earth People to this planet was, of course, to apply a corrective to any of the Pacificos' aberrant mannerisms or articulation. This was the polishing up phase.
* * * * *
Pembroke began hobbling toward the docks. Almost at once he found himself face to face with Mary Ann. She smiled happily when she recognized him. That was a good thing.
"It is a sign of poor breeding to smile at tramps," Pembroke admonished her in a whisper. "Walk on ahead."
She obeyed. He followed. The crowd grew thicker. They neared the docks and Pembroke saw that there were now set up on the roped-off wharves small interviewing booths. When it was their turn, he and Mary Ann each went into separate ones. Pembroke found himself alone in the little room.
Then he saw that there was another entity in his presence confined beneath a glass dome. It looked rather like a groundhog and had seven fingers on each of its six limbs. But it was larger and hairier than the glass one he had seen at the gift store. With four of its limbs it tapped on an intricate keyboard in front of it.
"What is your name?" queried a metallic voice from a speaker on the wall.
"I'm Jerry Newton. Got no middle initial," Pembroke said in a surly voice.
"Occupation?"
"I work a lot o' trades. Fisherman, fruit picker, fightin' range fires, vineyards, car washer. Anything. You name it. Been out of work for a long time now, though. Goin' on five months. These here are hard times, no matter what they say."
"What do you think of the Chinese situation?" the voice inquired.
"Which situation's 'at?"
"Where's Seattle?"
"Seattle? State o' Washington."
And so it went for about five minutes. Then he was told he had qualified as a satisfactory surrogate for a mid-twentieth century American male, itinerant type.
"You understand your mission, Newton?" the voice asked. "You are to establish yourself on Earth. In time you will receive instructions. Then you will attack. You will not see us, your masters, again until the atmosphere has been sufficiently chlorinated. In the meantime, serve us well."
He stumbled out toward the docks, then looked about for Mary Ann. He saw her at last behind the ropes, her lovely face in tears.
Then she saw him. Waving frantically, she called his name several times. Pembroke mingled with the crowd moving toward the ship, ignoring her. But still the woman persisted in her shouting.
Sidling up to a well-dressed man-about-town type, Pembroke winked at him and snickered.
"You Frank?" he asked.
"Hell, no. But some poor punk's sure red in the face, I'll bet," the man-about-town said with a chuckle. "Those high-strung paramour types always raising a ruckus. They never do pass the interview. Don't know why they even make 'em."
Suddenly Mary Ann was quiet.
"Ambulance squad," Pembroke's companion explained. "They'll take her off to the buggy house for a few days and bring her out fresh and ignorant as the day she was assembled. Don't know why they keep making 'em, as I say. But I guess there's a call for that type up there on Earth."
"Yeah, I reckon there is at that," said Pembroke, snickering again as he moved away from the other. "And why not? Hey? Why not?"
Pembroke went right on hating himself, however, till the night he was deposited in a field outside of Ensenada, broke but happy, with two other itinerant types. They separated in San Diego, and it was not long before Pembroke was explaining to the police how he had drifted far from the scene of the sinking of the Elena Mia on a piece of wreckage, and had been picked up by a Chilean trawler. How he had then made his way, with much suffering, up the coast to California. Two days later, his identity established and his circumstances again solvent, he was headed for Los Angeles to begin his save-Earth campaign.
* * * * *
Now, seated at his battered desk in the shabby rented office over Lemark's Liquors, Pembroke gazed without emotion at the two demolished Pacificos that lay sprawled one atop the other in the corner. His watch said one-fifteen. The man from the FBI should arrive soon.
There were footsteps on the stairs for the third time that day. Not the brisk, efficient steps of a federal official, but the hesitant, self-conscious steps of a junior clerk type.
Pembroke rose as the young man appeared at the door. His face was smooth, unpimpled, clean-shaven, without sweat on a warm summer afternoon.
"Are you Dr. Von Schubert?" the newcomer asked, peering into the room. "You see, I've got a problem--"
The four shots from Pembroke's pistol solved his problem effectively. Pembroke tossed his third victim onto the pile, then opened a can of lager, quaffing it appreciatively. Seating himself once more, he leaned back in the chair, both feet upon the desk.
He would be out of business soon, once the FBI agent had got there. Pembroke was only in it to get the proof he would need to convince people of the truth of his tale. But in the meantime he allowed himself to admire the clipping of the newspaper ad he had run in all the Los Angeles papers for the past week. The little ad that had saved mankind from God-knew-what insidious menace. It read:
ARE YOU IMPERFECT?
LET DR. VON SCHUBERT POINT OUT YOUR FLAWS
IT IS HIS GOAL TO MAKE YOU THE AVERAGE FOR YOUR TYPE
FEE--$3.75
MONEY BACK IF NOT SATISFIED!
THE END
COMPETITION
by James Causey
They would learn what caused the murderous disease--if it was the last thing they did!
GRETA
January 18, Earth Time
I wish Max would treat me like a woman.
An hour ago, at dinner, John Armitage proposed a toast, especially for my benefit. He loves to play the gallant. Big man, silver mane, very blue eyes, a porcelain smile. The head of WSC, the perfect example of the politician-scientist.
"To the colony," he announced, raising his glass. "May Epsilon love them and keep them. May it only be transmittal trouble."
"Amen," Max said.
We drank. Taylor Bishop put down his glass precisely. Bishop is a gray little man with a diffident voice that belies his reputation as the best biochemist in the system. "Has Farragut hinted otherwise?" he asked mildly.
Armitage frowned. "It would be scarcely prudent for Senator Farragut to alarm the populace with disaster rumors."
Bishop looked at him out of his pale eyes. "Besides, it's an election year."
The silence was suddenly ugly.
Then Armitage chuckled. "All right," he said. "So the Senator wants to be a national hero. The fact still remains that Epsilon had better be habitable or Pan-Asia will scream we're hogging it. They want war anyway. Within a month--boom."
* * * * *
For a moment, I was afraid he was going to make a speech about Earth's suffocating billions, the screaming tension of the cold war, and the sacred necessity of Our Mission. If he had, I'd have gotten the weeping shrieks. Some responsibilities are too great to think about. But instead he winked at me. For the first time, I began to realize why Armitage was the Director of the Scientists' World Council.
"Hypothesis, Greta," he said. "Epsilon is probably a paradise. Why should the test colony let the rest of the world in on it? They're being selfish."
I giggled. We relaxed.
After supper, Armitage played chess with Bishop while I followed Max into the control room.
"Soon?" I said.
"Planetfall in eighteen hours, Doctor." He said it stiffly, busying himself at the controls. Max is a small dark man with angry eyes and the saddest mouth I've ever seen. He is also a fine pilot and magnificent bacteriologist. I wanted to slap him. I hate these professional British types that think a female biochemist is some sort of freak.
"Honestly," I said. "What do you think?"
"Disease," he said bitterly. "For the first six months they reported on schedule, remember? A fine clean planet, no dominant life-forms, perfect for immigration; unique, one world in a billion. Abruptly they stopped sending. You figure it."
I thought about it.
"I read your thematic on Venusian viruses," he said abruptly. "Good show. You should be an asset to us, Doctor."
"Thanks!" I snapped. I was so furious that I inadvertently looked into the cabin viewplate.
Bishop had warned me. It takes years of deep-space time to enable a person to stare at the naked Universe without screaming.
It got me. The crystal thunder of the stars, that horrible hungry blackness. I remember I was sort of crying and fighting, then Max had me by the shoulders, holding me gently. He was murmuring and stroking my hair. After a time, I stopped whimpering.
"Thanks," I whispered.
"You'd better get some sleep, Greta," he said.
I turned in.
I think I'm falling in love.
* * * * *
January 19
Today we made planetfall. It took Max a few hours to home in on the test colony ship. He finally found it, on the shore of an inland sea that gleamed like wrinkled blue satin. For a time we cruised in widening spirals, trying to detect some signs of life. There was nothing.
We finally landed. Max and Armitage donned spacesuits and went toward the colony ship. They came back in a few hours, very pale.
"They're dead." Armitage's voice cracked as he came out of the airlock. "All of them."
"Skeletons," Max said.
"How?" Bishop said.
Armitage's hands were shaking as he poured a drink. "Looks like civil war."
"But there were a hundred of them," I whispered. "They were dedicated--"
"I wonder," Bishop said thoughtfully. "White and brown and yellow. Russian and British and French and German and Chinese and Spanish. They were chosen for technical background rather than emotional stability."
"Rot!" Armitage said like drums beating. "It's some alien bug, some toxin. We've got to isolate it, find an antibody."
He went to work.
* * * * *
January 22
I'm scared.
It's taken three days to finalize the atmospheric tests. Oxygen, nitrogen, helium, with trace gases. Those trace gases are stinkers. Bishop discovered a new inert gas, heavier than Xenon. He's excited. I'm currently checking stuff that looks like residual organic, and am not too happy about it. Still, this atmosphere seems pure.
Armitage is chafing.
"It's in the flora," he insisted today. "Something, perhaps, that they ate." He stood with a strained tautness, staring feverishly at the chronometer. "Senator Farragut's due to make contact soon. What'll I tell him?"
"That we're working on it," Bishop said dryly. "That the four best scientists in the Galaxy are working toward the solution."
"That's good," Armitage said seriously. "But they'll worry. You are making progress?"
I wanted to wrap a pestle around his neck.
We were all in the control room an hour later. Armitage practically stood at attention while Farragut's voice boomed from the transmitter.
It was very emetic. The Senator said the entire hemisphere was waiting for us to announce the planet was safe for immigration. He said the stars were a challenge to Man. He spoke fearfully of the Coming World Crisis. Epsilon was Man's last chance for survival. Armitage assured him our progress was satisfactory, that within a few days we would have something tangible to report. The Senator said we were heroes.
Finally it was over. Max yawned. "Wonder how many voters start field work at once."
Armitage frowned. "It's not funny, Cizon. Not funny at all. Inasmuch as we've checked out the atmosphere, I suggest we start field work at once."
Taylor blinked. "We're still testing a few residual--"
"I happen to be nominal leader of this party." Armitage stood very tall, very determined. "Obviously the atmosphere is pure. Let's make some progress!"
* * * * *
February 2
This is progress?
For the past ten days, we've worked the clock around. Quantitative analysis, soil, water, flora, fauna, cellular, microscopic. Nothing. Max has discovered a few lethal alkaloids in some greenish tree fungus, but I doubt if the colony were indiscriminate fungus eaters. Bishop has found a few new unicellular types, but nothing dangerous. There's one tentacled thing that reminds me of a frightened rotifer. Max named it Armitagium. Armitage is pleased.
Perhaps the fate of the hundred colonists will remain one of those forever unsolved mysteries, like the fate of the Mary Celeste or the starship Prometheus.
This planet's clean.
* * * * *
February 4
Today Max and I went specimen-hunting.
It must be autumn on Epsilon. Everywhere the trees are a riot of scarlet and ocher, the scrubby bushes are shedding their leaves. Once we came upon a field of thistlelike plants with spiny seed-pods that opened as we watched, the purple spores drifting afield in an eddy of tinted mist. Max said it reminded him of Scotland. He kissed me.
On the way back to the ship we saw two skeletons. Each had its fingers tightly locked about the other's throat.
* * * * *
February 20
We have, to date, analyzed nine hundred types of plant life for toxin content. Bishop has tested innumerable spores and bacteria. Our slide file is immense and still growing. Max has captured several insects. There is one tiny yellow bush-spider with a killing bite, but the species seem to be rare. Bishop has isolated a mold bacterium that could cause a high fever, but its propagation rate is far too low to enable it to last long in the bloodstream.
The most dangerous animal seems to be a two-foot-tall arthropod. They're rare and peaceable. Bishop vivisected one yesterday and found nothing alarming.
Last night I dreamed about the first expedition. I dreamed they all committed suicide because Epsilon was too good for them.
This is ridiculous!
We're working in a sort of quiet madness getting no closer to the solution.
Armitage talked to Senator Farragut yesterday and hinted darkly that the first ship's hydroponics system went haywire and that an improper carbohydrate imbalance killed the colony. Pretty thin. Farragut's getting impatient. Bishop looks haggard. Max looks grim.
* * * * *
February 23
Our quantitative tests are slowing down. We play a rubber of bridge each night before retiring. Last night I trumped Max's ace and he snarled at me. We had a fight. This morning I found a bouquet of purple spore-thistles at my cabin door. Max is sweet.
This afternoon, by mutual consent, we all knocked off work and played bridge. Bishop noticed the thistle bouquet in a vase over the chronometer. He objected.
"They're harmless," Max said. "Besides, they smell nice."
I can hardly wait for tomorrow's rubber. Our work is important, but one does need relaxation.
* * * * *
February 25
Armitage is cheating.
Yesterday he failed to score one of my overtricks. We argued bitterly about it. Taylor, of course, sided with him. Three hands later, Armitage got the bid in hearts. "One hundred and fifty honors," he announced.
"That's a lie," I said.
"It was only a hundred," he grinned. "But thank you, Greta. Now I shan't try the queen finesse."
No wonder they've won the last three evenings! Max is furious with them both.
* * * * *
February 28
We played all day. Max and I kept losing. I always knew Armitage was a pompous toad, but I never realized he was slimy.
This afternoon it was game all, and Armitage overcalled my diamond opener with three spades. Bishop took him to four and I doubled, counting on my ace-king of hearts and diamonds.
I led out my diamond ace and Armitage trumped from his hand. Bishop laid down his dummy. He had clubs and spades solid, with doubleton heart and diamonds.
"None?" Max asked Armitage dangerously.
Armitage tittered. I wanted to scratch his eyes out. He drew trump immediately and set up clubs on board, dumping the heart losers from his hand, and finally sluffing--two diamonds.
"Made seven," he said complacently, "less two for the diamond renege makes five, one overtrick doubled. We were vulnerable, so it's game and rubber."
I gasped. "You reneged deliberately!"
"Certainly. Doubleton in hearts and diamonds in my hand. If you get in, I'm down one. As it was, I made an overtrick. The only penalty for a renege is two tricks. The rule book does not differentiate between deliberate and accidental reneges. Sorry."
I stared at his florid throat, at his jugular. I could feel my mouth twitching.
On the next hand I was dummy. I excused myself and went into the lab. I found a scalpel. I came up quietly behind Armitage and Bishop saw what I was going to do and shouted and I was not nearly fast enough. Armitage ducked and Bishop tackled me.
"Thanks, dear," Max said thoughtfully, looking at the cards scattered on the floor. "We would have been set one trick. Club finesse fails."
"She's crazy!" Armitage's mouth worked. "The strain's too much for her!"
I cried. I apologized hysterically. After a while, I convinced them I was all right. Max gave me a sedative. We did not play any more bridge. Over supper I kept staring at Armitage's throat.
After eating, I went for a long walk. When I got back to the ship, everyone was sleeping.
* * * * *
March 1
Bishop found Armitage this morning, in his cabin. He came out, very pale, staring at me.
"You bitch," he said. "Ear to ear. Now what'll I do for a partner?"
"You can't prove it," I said.
"We'll have to confine her to quarters," Max said wearily. "I'll tell Farragut."
"And let him know the expedition is failing?"
Max sighed. "You're right. We'll tell them Armitage had an accident."
I said seriously, "It was obviously suicide. His mind snapped."
"Oh, God," Max said.
They buried Armitage this afternoon. From my cabin, I watched them dig the grave.
Cheaters never prosper.
* * * * *
March 2
Max talked with Senator Farragut this morning. He said Armitage had died a hero's death. Farragut sounds worried. The Pan-Asians have withdrawn their embassy from Imperial Africa. Tension is mounting on the home front. Immigration must start this week. Max was very reassuring. "Just a few final tests, Senator. We want to make sure."
We puttered in our laboratories all afternoon. Bishop seemed bored. After dinner he suggested three-handed bridge and Max said he knew a better game, a friendly game his grandmother had taught him--hearts.
* * * * *
March 5
It's a plot!
All day long Bishop and Max have managed to give me the queen of spades. It's deliberate, of course. Three times I've tried for the moon and Bishop has held out one damned little heart at the end. Once Max was slightly ahead on points and Bishop demanded to see the score. I thought for a moment they would come to blows, but Bishop apologized.
"It's just that I hate to lose," he said.
"Quite," Max said.
When we finally turned in, Bishop was ahead on points.
Too far ahead.
* * * * *
March 6
I suppose it's Bishop's laugh. It has a peculiar horselike stridency that makes me want to tear out his throat. Twice today I've broken down and cried when he made a jackpot.
I'm not going to cry any more.
Supper was the usual, beef-yeast and vita-ale. I remember setting Bishop's plate in front of him, and the way his pale eyes gleamed between mouthfuls. "Three thousand points ahead," he gloated. "You'll never catch me now. Never, never!"
That was when he gripped his throat and began writhing on the floor.
Max felt his pulse. He stared at me.
"Very nice," he said. "Quick. Did you use a derivative of that green fungus?"
I said nothing. Max's nostrils were white and pinched. "Must I make an autopsy?"
"Why bother?" I said. "It's obviously heart failure."
"Yes, why bother?" he said. He looked tired. "Stay in your cabin, Greta. I'll bring your meals."
"I don't trust you."
His laughter had a touch of madness.
* * * * *
March 10
Max unlocked my cabin door this morning. He looked drawn. "Listen," he said. "I've checked my respiration, pulse, saliva, temperature. All normal."
"So?"
"Come here," he said. I followed him into the lab. He indicated a microscope. His eyes were bright.
"Well?"
"A drop of my blood," he said. "Look."
I squinted into the microscope. I saw purple discs. Oddly, they did not attack the red blood cells. There was no fission, no mitosis. The leucocytes, strangely enough, let them alone.
My hands were shaking as I took a sterile slide and pricked my finger. I put the slide under the microscope. I adjusted the lens and stared.
Purple discs, swimming in my bloodstream. Thriving. Minding their own business.
"Me, too," I said.
"They're inert," Max said hoarsely. "They don't affect metabolism, cause fever, or interfere with the body chemistry in any way. Do they remind you of anything?"
I thought about it. Then I went to the slide file that was marked flora--negative.
"Right," Max said. "The purple thistle. Spores! The atmosphere is clogged with them. Greta, my sweet, we're infected."
"I feel fine," I said.
All day long we ran tests. Negative tests. We seem to be disgustingly healthy. "Symbiosis," Max said finally. "Live and let live. Apparently we're hosts."
Only one thing disturbs me.
Most symbiotes do something for their host. Something to enhance the host's survival potential.
We played chess this evening. I won. Max is furious. He's such a poor sport.
* * * * *
March 11
Max talked with Senator Farragut this morning. He gave Epsilon a clean bill of health and the Senator thanked God. "The first starship will leave tonight," the Senator said. "Right on schedule, with ten thousand colonists aboard. You're world heroes!"
Max and I played chess the rest of the day. Max won consistently. He utilizes a fianchetto that is utterly impregnable. If he wins tomorrow, I shall have to kill him.
* * * * *
MAX
March 13
It was, of course, necessary for me to destroy Armitage and Bishop. They won far too often. But I am sorry about Greta. Yet I had to strangle her.
If she hadn't started that infernal queen's pawn opening it would have been different. She beat me six times running, and on the last game I pulled a superb orang-outang, but it was too late. She saw mate in four and gave me that serpent smirk I know so well.
How could I have ever been in love with her?
* * * * *
March 14
Frightfully boring to be alone. I have a thought. Chess. Right hand against left. White and black. Jolly good.
* * * * *
March 16
I haven't much time.
Left was black this morning and I beat him, four out of five. We're in the lab now. He's watching me scribble this. His thumb and forefinger are twitching in fury. He looks like some great white spider about to spring.
He sees the scalpel, by the microscope. Now his fingers are inching toward it. Treacherous beast. I'm stronger. If he tries to amputate ...
FINAL WEAPON
BY EVERETT B. COLE
Man has developed many a deadly weapon. Today, the weapon most effective in destroying a man's hopes and security is the file folder ... and that was the weapon Morely knew and loved. But there was something more potent to come.
District Leader Howard Morely leaned back in his seat, to glance down at the bay. Idly, he allowed his gaze to wander over the expanse of water between the two blunt points of land, then he looked back at the skeletonlike spire which jutted upward from the green hills he had just passed over. He could remember when that ruin had been a support for one of the world's great bridges.
Now, a crumbling symbol of the past, it stubbornly resisted the attacks of the weather, as it had once resisted the far more powerful blasts of explosives. Obstinately, it pointed its rusty length skyward, to remind the observer of bygone conflict--and more.
Together with the tangled cables, dimly seen in the shoal water, the line of wreckage in the channel, and the weed-covered strip of torn concrete which led through the hills, it testified to the arrival of the air age. Bridges, highways, and harbors alike had passed their day of usefulness.
Not far from the ruined bridge support, Morely could see the huge, well maintained intake of one of the chemical extraction plants. He shook his head at the contrast.
"That eyesore should be pulled down," he muttered. "Should have been pulled down long ago. Suggested it in a report, but I suppose it never got to the Old Man. He depends on his staff too much. If I had the region, I'd--"
He shook his head. He was not the regional director--yet. Some day, the old director would retire. Then, Central Coördination would be examining the records of various district leaders, looking for a successor. Then--
He shrugged and turned his attention to his piloting of the borrowed helicopter. It was a clumsy machine, and he had to get in to Regional Headquarters in time for the morning conference. There would be no sense it getting involved in employee traffic--not if he could avoid it.
The conference, his informant had told him, would be a little out of the ordinary. It seemed that the Old Man had become somewhat irritated by the excess privileges allowed in a few of the eastern districts. And he was going to jack everyone up about it. After that would come the usual period of reports, and possibly a few special instructions. Some of the leaders would have pet projects to put forward, he knew. They always did. Morely smiled to himself. He'd have something to come up with, too.
And this conference might put a crimp in Harwood's style. Morely had carefully worded his progress report to make contrast with the type of report that he knew would come from District One. George Harwood had been allowing quite a few extra privileges to his people, stating that it was good for morale. And, during the past couple of months, he'd seemed to be proving his point. Certainly, the production of the employees from the peninsula had been climbing. Harwood, Morely decided would be the most logical person--after himself--for the region when the Old Man retired. In fact, for a time, it had looked as though the director of District One was going to be a dangerous rival.
But this conference would change things. Morely smiled slowly as he thought of possible ways of shading the odds.
He looked ahead. Commuters were streaming in from the peninsula now, to make for the factory parking lots. His face tightened a little. Why, he wondered, had the Old Man decided to call the conference at this hour? He could have delayed a little, until commuter traffic was less heavy. He'd been a district leader once. And before that, under the old government, a field leader. He should know how annoying the employee classes could be. And to force his leaders to mingle with commuting employees in heavy traffic!
* * * * *
For that matter, everyone seemed to be conspiring to make things uncomfortable today. Those heavy-handed mechanics in the district motor pool, for example. They'd failed him today. His own sleek machine, with its distinctive markings was still being repaired. And he'd been forced to use this unmarked security patrol heli. The machine wasn't really too bad, of course. It had a superb motor, and it carried identification lights and siren, which could be used if necessary. But it resembled some lower-class citizen's family carryall. And, despite its modifications, it still handled like one. Morely grimaced and eased the wheel left a little. The helicopter swung in a slow arc.
Helis were rising from the factory lots, to interlace with incoming ships before joining with the great stream headed south. The night workers were heading for home. Morely hovered his machine for a moment, to watch the ships jockey for position, sometimes barely avoiding collisions in the stream of traffic. He watched one ship, which edged forward, stopped barely in time to avoid being hit, edged forward again, and finally managed to block traffic for a time while its inept driver fooled with the controls and finally got on course.
"Quarrelsome, brawling fools," he muttered. "Even among themselves, they can't get along."
He looked around, noting that the air over the Administrative Group was comparatively free of traffic. To be sure, he would have to cross the traffic lines, but he could take the upper lanes, avoiding all but official traffic. A guard might challenge, but he could use his identifying lights. He wouldn't be halted. He corrected his course a little, glanced at the altimeter, and put his ship into a climb.
At length, he eased his ship over the parklike area over Administrative Square and hovered over the parking entry. A light blinked on his dash, to tell him that all the official spaces were occupied. He grunted.
"Wonder they couldn't leave a clear space in Official. They know I'm coming in for conference."
He moved the control wheel, allowing his ship to slide over to a shopping center parking slot, and hovered over the entry, debating. He could park here and take the sub-surface to Administrative, or he could use the surface lot just outside of the headquarters group. Of course, the director frowned on use of the surface lot, except in emergency. The underground lots were designated for all normal parking. Morely thought over the problem, ignoring the helis which hovered, waiting for him to clear the center of the landing area. Finally, his hand started for the throttle. He would settle in the landing slot, let the guards shove his heli to a space, and avoid any conflict with the director's orders regarding the surface lot.
* * * * *
Suddenly, there was a sputtering roar. Someone had become impatient at the delay. A small sports heli swept by, impellers reversed, and dropped rapidly toward the entry to the underground parking space. Morely's ship rocked a little in the air blast.
For an instant, Morely felt a sharp pain which gnawed at the pit of his stomach. His head was abruptly light, and his hand, apparently of its own volition, closed over the throttle knob.
This joy boy was overdue for a lesson.
Morely measured the distance quickly, judging the instant when the other pilot would have to repitch his impellers and halt his downward rush. He allowed his own heavy ship to wallow earthward.
Scant feet from ground surface, the sportster pilot flicked his pitch control and pulled his throttle out for the brief burst of power which would allow him to drop gently to the landing platform.
Morely grinned savagely as he saw the impellers below him change pitch and start to move faster. He twisted his own impellers to full pitch and pulled out the throttle for a sudden, roaring surge of power, then swung the control column, jerking his ship up and away. As he steadied his heli and cut power, he looked down.
The powerful downblast had completely upset the sportster pilot's calculations. The small ship, struck by the gale from above, had listed to the right and gone out of control, grazing one of the heavy splinter shutters at the side of the landing slot. The ship lay on its side, amidst the wreckage of its impellers.
Morely flicked on his warning siren and lights, then feathered his own impellers, dropping his ship in free fall. He dropped to the grassy area by the landing slot, ignoring the other ships which scattered like frightened chickens, to give him room. At the last instant, he twisted the impellers to full pitch again, pulled out the throttle for a moment, then slammed the lever to the closed position. His ship touched down on springy turf, its landing gear settling gently to accept the weight. A klaxon was sounding, and warning lights flashed from the landing slot, to warn ships away from an attempted landing.
It would be a long time before the shiny, new sportster would be in condition to sweep into another parking area. And, after paying his fine and taking care of his extra duties, it would be an even longer time before the employee-pilot would have much business in the luxury shopping center, anyway.
Morely smiled bitterly as he closed the door of his ship. It didn't pay to cross Howard Morely--ever.
He walked slowly toward the landing slot, motioning imperiously to an approaching guard.
"Have someone place that ship for me," he ordered, jerking a thumb back toward his heli. "Then come over to that wreck. I shall want words with the pilot." He held out his small identification folder.
The guard's glance went to the folder. For an instant, he studied the card exposed before him, then he straightened and saluted, his face expressionless.
"Yes, sir." He signaled another guard, then pointed toward Morely's ship, and to the landing slot. "I can go with you now."
The two went down in the elevator and walked over to the wrecked sportster. A slender man was crawling from a door. When the man was clear of his ship, Morely beckoned.
"Over here, Fellow," he commanded.
The sportster pilot approached, the indignation on his face changing to bewilderment, then dismay as he noted Morely's insignia and the attitude of the two men who faced him.
Morely turned to the guard.
"Get me his name, identification number, and the name of his leader."
"Yes, sir."
The guard turned to the man, who grimaced a little with pain as he slowly put a hand in his pocket. Wordlessly, he extracted a bulky folder, from which he took a small booklet. He held out the booklet to the guard.
Morely held out a hand. "Never mind," he said. "Simply put him in custody. I'll turn this over to his leader myself."
He had noted the cover design on the booklet. It was from District One--Harwood's district. He flipped the cover open, ascertaining that there was no transfer notice. He'd give this to Harwood all right--at the right time. He looked at his watch.
"I shall want my heli in about three hours," he announced. "See to it that it's ready. And have a man check the fuel and see if the ship's damaged in any way." He turned away.
* * * * *
The district leaders sat before the large conference table. Among them, close to the director's place, was Morely, his face fixed in an expression of alert interest. His informant had been right. The man must have gotten a look at the Old Man's notes. The regional director was criticizing the laxity in inspection and control of employee activities. He objected to the excessive luxury activity allowed to some members of the employee classes, as well as to the overabundance of leisure allowed in several cases, some of which he described in detail.
He especially pointed up the fact that a recent heli meet had been almost dominated by employee class entries. And he pointed out the fact that there was considerable rehabilitation work to be done in bombed areas. It could be done by employees, during their time away from their subsistence jobs. That was all community time, he reminded.
It was all very well, he said, to allow the second- and even third-class citizens a certain amount of leisure recreation. That kept morale up. But they were certainly not to be allowed any position of dominance, either individually, or as a class. That, he said, was something else again. It was precisely the sort of thing that had led to the collapse and downfall of many previous civilizations.
"Keep 'em busy," he ordered. "So busy they don't have time to think up mischief to get into. Remember, gentlemen, second- and third-class citizens have no rights--only privileges. And privileges may be withdrawn at any time."
He rapped sharply on the table and sat down, looking at the leader of District One.
One by one, the district leaders made their verbal reports of activity. Occasionally, questions of production or work quotas were brought up and decided. Morely waited.
At last, he made his own report, emphasizing the fact that his district had exceeded its quotas--subsistence, luxury, and rehabilitation--for the fourth consecutive quarter. He cited a couple of community construction projects he had ordered and which were well on the way to completion, and brought out the fact that his people, at least, were being inspected constantly and thoroughly.
Also, he suggested, if any time remained to be used, or if leisure activity threatened to become excessive, it might be well to turn some attention outside of the old urban areas. There was considerable bomb damage in the suburban and former farming areas, and the scrap from some of the ruined structures could be stockpiled for disposal to factories and community reclamation plants.
Further, a beautification program for the entire region might keep some of the employee class busy for some time. And some of the ex-farmers among the lower classes might find it pleasant to work once again with the soil, instead of their normal work in the synthetic food labs or machine shops. With the director's permission, he could start the program by removing the useless tower and wreckage at the bay channel, and by salvaging the metal from it. Of course, he admitted, it was a trifle beyond his own authority, since most of the channel was in District One. The regional director cast him a sharp glance, then considered the suggestion. At last, he nodded.
"It might be well," he decided. "Go ahead, Morely. Take care of that detail." He looked over at his executive. "Have Planning draw up something on salvage and beautification in the former rural areas," he ordered. He looked about the room.
"And the rest of you might try looking over your own districts. You don't have to wait for a directive, and every one of you can find some improvement that could be made. If it's a district line matter, submit some plan for mutual agreement to my office." He rose and went to the door.
Morely waited, watching George Harwood. The leader of District One gathered his papers, looked down the table for an instant, then went out. Morely followed him at a discreet distance.
As Harwood neared the door to the regional director's office, Morely caught up with him.
"Oh, Harwood," he said loudly. "Caught one of your people in a flagrant case of reckless flying this morning. Why don't you bear down a little on those fellows of yours? This one seemed to think he was winning a heli meet."
He held out the folder he had confiscated. "Here's his identification. I had the guards hold him for you. Second-class citizen. Must've had a lot of spare time, to get the luxury credits and purchase authorization for that ship of his."
Harwood looked at him, a faint expression of annoyance crossing his face. Then, he glanced at the open door nearby, and comprehension grew on his face. He took the folder, nodded wordlessly, and walked rapidly past Morely, who turned to watch him.
As Harwood swung through the door to an elevator, Morely smiled appreciatively. That had been a smart trick, he thought. Have to remember that one. No argument to disturb the Old Man. Not even positive proof that Morely hadn't been talking to empty space. But there was an answer to that, too, if one was alert. He walked through the doorway into the director's office.
The regional director looked up.
"Oh, Morely. You wanted to see me?"
"Yes, sir." Morely stood at rigid attention. "I just thought of all those useless highways around the countryside. Of course, a few of them have been camouflaged and converted to temporary and emergency heli parking lots, but there's still a lot of waste concrete about that could be removed. It would improve the camouflage of the groups. It could be divided into community projects for spare time work, sir."
"Very good idea. If this stalemate we're in should develop into another war, it would be well to have as few landmarks as possible. And some of these people do have too much time on their hands. They sit around, thinking of their so-called rights. Next thing we know, some of the second-class citizens'll be screaming for the privilege of a vote. Set it up in your district, Morely. We'll see how it works out, and the rest of the district leaders can follow your example."
He looked sharply at Morely. "Heard a little disturbance in the hall just before you came in."
"Oh, that." Morely contrived a look of confusion. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean anyone to hear that. It was just that I had a minor bit of business with Leader Harwood. One of his people nearly knocked me out of the air this morning, over a parking area, and I confiscated his identification. I tried to give it to Harwood after the conference, but he must have been in a hurry. I caught up with him and gave him the folder."
"So I heard." The director smiled wryly. "Anything more?"
"No, sir." Morely saluted and left.
"That," he told himself, "should drop Harwood a few points."
He went to the parking area to reclaim his helicopter. Better get back to his district and start setting up those community projects. Too, he would have to run a check inspection or so this evening. See to it his sector men weren't getting lax. He'd check on Bond tonight.
* * * * *
He flew back to District Twelve, dropped his helicopter into the landing area, and made his way to his office.
Inside, he went to a file, from which he took his spot-inspection folder. Carrying it to his desk, he checked it. Yes, Bond's sector was due for a spot inspection. Might be well to make a detailed check of one of the employees in that sector, too. Morely touched a button on his desk.
Almost immediately, a clerk stood in the doorway.
"Get me the master quarters file for Sector Fourteen," Morely ordered.
The clerk went out, to return with two long file drawers. Quickly, he set them side by side on a small table, which he pushed over to his superior's desk.
Idly, Morely fingered through the cards, noting the indexing and condition of the file. He nodded in approval, then gave the clerk a nod of dismissal. At least, his people were keeping their files in order.
He reached into a pocket, to withdraw a notebook. Turning its pages, he found a few of the entries he had made on population changes, then cross-checked them against the files. All were posted and properly cross-indexed. Again, he nodded in satisfaction.
Evidently, that last dressing down he had given the files section had done some good. For a moment, he considered calling in the chief clerk and complimenting him. Then, he changed his mind.
"No use giving him a swelled head," he told himself.
He drew a file drawer to him, running his finger down its length. At last, he pulled a card at random. It was colored light blue.
He put it back. Didn't want to check a group leader. He'd be a first-class citizen, and entitled to privacy. He pulled another card from a different section of the file. This one was salmon pink--an assistant group leader. He examined it. The man was a junior equipment designer in one of the communications plants. For a moment, Morely tapped the card against his desk. Actually, he had wanted a basic employee, but it might be well to check one of the leadmen. He could have the man accompany him while he made a further check on one of the apartments in his sub-group. Again, he looked at the card.
Paul Graham, he noted, was forty-two years of age. He had three children--was an electronics designer, junior grade. His professional profile showed considerable ability and training, but the security profile showed a couple of threes. Nothing really serious, but he would be naturally expected to be a second-class citizen--or below. It was not an unusual card.
Morely looked at the quarters code. Graham lived in Apartment 7A, Group 723, which was in Block 1022, Sector Fourteen. It would be well to check his quarters first, then check, say, 7E. Morely went through the numerical file, found the card under 7E, and flipped the pages of his notebook to a blank sheet, upon which he copied the data he needed from the two cards.
He put the notebook in his pocket and returned the cards to their places in the file, then riffled the entire file once more, to be sure there would be no clue as to which cards he had consulted. Finally, he touched the button on his desk again.
Once more, the clerk stood in the doorway.
"This file seems to be satisfactory," he was told. "You may bring in the correspondence now."
The correspondence was no heavier than usual. Morely flipped through the routine matter, occasionally selecting a report or letter and abstracting data. Tomorrow, he could check performance by referring to these. At last, he turned to the separate pile of directives, production and man-hour reports, and other papers which demanded more attention than the routine paper.
He worked through the stack of paper, occasionally calling upon his clerk for file data, sometimes making a communicator call. At last, he pushed away the last remaining report and leaned back. He spun his chair about, activated the large entertainment screen, and spent some time watching a playlet. At the end of the play, he glanced at his watch, then turned back to his desk. He leaned forward to touch a button on his communicator.
As the viewsphere lit, he flicked on the two-way video, then spoke.
"Get me Sector Leader Bond." He snapped the communicator off almost before the operator could acknowledge, then spun about, switching his entertainment screen to ground surface scan. A scene built up, showing a view from his estate in the hills.
* * * * *
There were some buildings on the surface--mostly homes of upper grade citizens, who preferred the open air, and could afford to have a surface estate in addition to their quarters in the groups. These homes, for the most part, were located in wooded areas, where their owners could find suitable fishing and hunting.
Most of the traces of damage done by the bombings of the Nineties were gone from about the estate areas by now, and the few which remained were being eliminated. Morely increased the magnification, to watch a few animals at a waterhole. He could do a little hunting in a few weeks. Take a nice leave. He drew a deep breath.
Those years after the end of the last war had been hectic, what with new organizational directives, the few sporadic revolts, the integration of homecoming fighters, and the final, tight set-up. But it had all been worth it. Everything was running smoothly now.
The second- and third-class citizens had learned to accept their status, and some few of them had even found they liked it. At least, now they had far more security. There was subsistence in plenty for all producers, thanks to the war-born advances in technology, and to the highly organized social framework. To be sure, a few still felt uneasy in the underground quarters, but the necessity for protection from bombing in another war had been made clear, and they'd just have to get used to conditions. And, there were a very few who, unable to get or hold employment, existed somehow in the spartan discomfort of the subsistence quarters.
For most, however, there was minor luxury, and a plenitude of necessities. And there was considerable freedom of action and choice as well as full living comfort for the full citizens, who had proved themselves to be completely trustworthy, and who were deemed fit to hold key positions.
The communicator beeped softly, and he glanced at the sphere. It showed the face of Harold Bond, leader of the fourteenth sector. The district leader snapped on his scanner.
"Report to me here in my office at eighteen hours, Bond."
"Yes, sir."
"And you might be sure your people are all in quarters this evening."
Bond nodded. "They will be, sir."
"That's all." Morely flicked the disconnect switch.
He got up, strode around the office, then consulted his watch. There would be time for a cup of coffee before Bond arrived. Time for a cup of coffee, and time for the employees in Sector Fourteen to scurry about, getting their quarters in shape for an inspection. They would have no way of knowing which quarters were to be checked, and all would be put in order.
He smiled. It was a good way, he thought, to insure that there would be no sloppiness in the homes of his people. And it certainly saved a lot of inspection time and a lot of direct contact.
He went out of the office, and walked slowly down to the snack bar, where he took his time over coffee, looking critically at the neat counter and about the room as he drank.
The counter girls busied themselves cleaning up imaginary spots on the plastic counter and on their equipment, casting occasional, apprehensive glances at him. Finally, he set his cup down, looked at the clock over the counter, and walked out.
Bond was waiting in the office. Morely examined the younger man, carefully appraising his appearance. The sector leader, he saw, was properly attired. The neat uniform looked as if freshly taken from the tailor shop. The man stepped forward alertly, to halt at the correct distance before his superior.
"Good evening, sir. My heli is on the roof."
"Very good." Morely nodded shortly and took his notebook from his pocket. "We'll go to Building Seven Twenty-three."
He turned and walked toward the self-service elevator. Bond hurried a little to open the door for him.
* * * * *
Bond eased the helicopter neatly through the entry slot and on down into one of the empty visitor spaces in the landing area at Block 1022. The two men walked across the areaway to an entrance.
As they went up the short flight of stairs into the hall, Morely took careful notice of the building. The mosaic tile of the stairs and floor gleamed from a recent scrubbing. The plastic and metal handrails were spotless. He looked briefly at his subordinate, then motioned toward the door at their right.
"This one," he ordered.
Bond touched the call button and they waited.
From inside the apartment, there was a slight rustle of motion, then the door opened and a man stood before them. For an instant, he looked startled, then he straightened.
"Paul Graham, sir," he announced. "Apartment 7A is ready for inspection." He stepped back.
Morely looked him over critically, saw nothing that warranted criticism, and went inside, followed by Bond.
Cursorily, the district leader let his gaze wander about the apartment. The kitchen at his left, he saw, was in perfect order, everything being in place and obviously clean. He went to the range and motioned with his head.
"Pull the drip pan," he ordered.
Graham came forward and pulled a flat sheet from the range, then opened an access door at the front of the stove.
Morely peered inside, then thrust a hand in. For a moment, he groped around, then he pulled his hand out and looked at it. It was clean. He sniffed at his fingers, then turned away.
"You may replace the pan, Fellow." He went into the living room, noting that the woman and three children were neat and in the proper attitudes of attention. One of the children was looking at him, wide-eyed. He saw that the child was clean and apparently healthy.
In addition to the usual chairs, table, and divan, there were some bookcases which formed a small alcove around a combination desk and drawing table. Morely circled the bookcases, to stand before the desk.
"What's this?" he demanded. He turned to a bookcase, to examine the titles.
Most of the books were engineering texts and reference works. There were some standard works of philosophy and a few on psychology. None of the titles seemed to be actually objectionable.
"I--" Graham started to speak, but Morely silenced him with an upraised hand.
"Later," he said coldly. "Bond, has this been reported to you, and have you investigated?"
Bond nodded. "Yes, sir," he said. "Graham is a design engineer, sir, and has been granted permission to do some research in his quarters.
"He's commercially employed, sir, and it was a routine matter. His employer says he has been keeping his production quotas, no alteration to the apartment has been made, and no community property has been defaced. I'm told that several of Graham's designs have been of value in his plant. I didn't think--"
"I see you didn't. What is this man working on now?"
"A new type of communicator, sir. I don't know all the details."
"Get them, Bond. Get them all, and give me a full report on his project and its progress tomorrow. Since this work is being done during time when the man is not working for his employer, he's using community time and the community becomes vitally interested in his results." Morely paused, looking at the bookcase again.
"And, while we are on the subject," he added, "get me details on those previous designs you spoke of. It's quite possible the community has not been getting royalty payments to which it's entitled." He picked out a book, flipping over its pages for a moment, then replaced it and looked searchingly at Bond.
"And get me a full inventory of this man's books and any equipment he may have." He turned on Graham.
"Do you have purchase authorization and receipts for all of this?"
"Yes, sir." Graham motioned toward the desk.
"Very well. I shan't bother with that now. An investigating team can check that."
Morely took a final glance at the half-finished schematic on the drawing board, then circled the bookcases again, to come out into the main room.
"We'll inspect the rest of your quarters."
* * * * *
At last, Morely left the quarters area, followed by Bond. As they reached the helicopter, Morely turned, one hand on the door.
"Laxity, Bond, is something I don't tolerate. You should know that. Possibly this man, Graham, is doing nothing illegal, or even irregular. Possibly, he is not wasting community time, but I have very serious doubts. I'll venture to say the community has a financial interest in several of his recent designs, and I mean to find out which ones and how much. And it's certainly an unusual situation. The man's a leadman, you know, and could spend his time more profitably in checking on the people he's responsible for." He slid into the seat.
"I'll concede," he continued, "that employees are to be allowed a certain amount of recreation of their own choosing. They may have light reading in their quarters, and they may even work on small projects--with permission, of course. But this man seems to have gone much farther than that. He has a small electronics factory of his own, as well as a rather extensive library. He's obviously spending a lot of time at his activities, and that time must come out of his community performance. This certainly is not routine, and I can't condone your failure to make a report on it."
"But, I--"
Morely held up a hand sternly. "Let's not have a string of excuses," he said. "Give me a full report on the man's possessions, his history, and the progress of whatever work he's doing in that private factory of his. Get the details on his previous designs, too. And bring your report in to me in the morning, personally. I shall want to determine whether to make this new device a community project, or whether to allow it to be offered to his employer on a community royalty agreement. And I shall require details on his older designs for Fiscal to examine into. Research, you should know, is a community function, not something to be done in any set of quarters. I shall want to talk to you further when I've gone over this matter.
"Now, get me back to the district offices. I want to get home, and you've work to do tonight."
* * * * *
The report was a long one. Morely smiled to himself as he thought of the time it must have taken Bond to assemble the data and to make up his final draft. Possibly in the future, that young man would be a little less inclined to assume too much authority, or to be too soft in his dealings with the employee classes. The spring in his swivel chair twanged musically as the district leader leaned back to read.
First, there was an inventory of Graham's effects. It was a lengthy list, followed by a certification by a security inspector that all of the equipment inventoried was covered by authorizations and receipts held by Graham, and that none of the books and equipment were of improper nature for possession by a member of the employee classes. Morely grunted and tossed that section aside.
There was a detailed history of Graham's activities, so far as known to Security. Morely scanned through it hurriedly. There was nothing here of an unusual nature.
Graham had been graduated from one of the large technical colleges during the early nineties. Morely noted that it was one of those schools which had been later closed as a result of one of the post-war investigations.
The subject had been employed by Consolidated Electronics as a junior engineer, and had designed several improvements for Consolidated's products. There was a record of promotions and a few awards. He had held a few patents, which had been taken over by the Central Coördination Products Division during the post-war reorganization. He had also belonged to the now proscribed Society of Electronic Engineers, had contributed articles to that organization's journal, and had taken an active part in some of its chapter meetings.
During the war, he had worked on radio-controlled servos, doing acceptable work. When the professional and trade societies and other organizations were outlawed, he had promptly resigned from his society, and made the required declarations. But he had been reported as privately remarking that it was "a sad thing to see the last vestiges of personal freedom removed."
Morely pursed his lips. Not an unusual history, he decided. Of course, the man was completely ineligible for full citizenship--bad risk. He was barely qualified for second-class citizenship, his obvious ability being the only qualifying factor. Unlike many, he had no record of any effort to shirk duty, or do economic damage during the critical period. The district leader tossed the dossier aside and picked up the report on Graham's present activities.
There were a series of complex schematics, and several machine drawings which he shuffled to the back of his report. Those could be interpreted later, if necessary. He was interested in the description of function.
The device Graham was working on was described as a communicator which operated by direct mind-to-mind transfer. Morely sat up straighter, reading the paragraph over again. Either this man was a true genius, who had discovered a new principle, or he was completely a crackpot.
"Telepathy!"
Morely snorted and went over to the descriptions of the device, reading carefully. Finally, he read the comments of a senior engineer, who cautiously admitted that the circuits involved, though highly unconventional, were not of a type to cause spurious radiation, or to interfere with normal communication in any way.
The engineer also noted that it was possible that the device might be capable of radiation effects outside of the electromagnetic spectrum, and that the power device was capable of integration into standard equipment--in fact, might be well worth adoption. He carefully declined, however, to give any definite opinion without an actual model to run tests on. And he added the comment that the first model was as yet incomplete.
Morely tossed the last sheet to his desk and leaned forward, tapping idly on the dull-finished plastic. Finally, he touched his call button and waited till the clerk came in.
"You may send Mr. Bond in now," he directed.
He picked up the section of the report dealing with Graham's past designs, and started scanning it. He would have the Fiscal chief go over this and set up the necessary royalty agreements with Consolidated. Some of them might generate worth-while amounts of funds.
* * * * *
He made no sign of recognition or awareness when Bond entered the office, but continued with his reading. At last, he pulled a notepad to him, wrote a brief indorsement to the Fiscal chief, and clipped it to the part of the report dealing with Graham's older designs. He replaced his pen in its stand and leaned back, to stare at his junior, who stood at rigid attention.
"Yes?"
"Sector Leader Bond, sir, reporting as ordered." Bond saluted.
Negligently, Merely returned the salute, then picked up Bond's report.
"I have gone through this, Bond," he announced. "Very interesting. And you thought it too unimportant to report on before?"
"I didn't want to bother you with some idle fantasy, sir. Until the man's experiments showed definite results of some sort, I--"
"And then, you hoped to spring a completed device on me? Take credit for it yourself, eh?"
"Not at all, sir. I--"
Morely raised a hand. "Never mind. I don't need any kind of aid to read your intentions. They're quite plain, I see. It would have been quite a credit to you, wouldn't it?
"'Look what I worked out, with a little, minor help from one of the employees in my sector.'
"But I've seen that line worked before, Bond, and worked smoothly. You don't catch the Old Man napping so easily as that." He paused.
"Of course we don't know whether or not this device is going to be of any real use. But we do know that this man, Graham, has developed one thing which can be profitably incorporated into conventional equipment. That power source of his appears to be quite practical, and we'll adopt it. Offer it to the man's employer, subject to community royalty. And see if you can get Graham a little time off work in compensation. Then, keep a close watch on his work on the rest of his device. He'll probably use his time off to work on it--at least, he'll be a lot better off if he does.
"I want frequent reports on his progress--daily reports, if any significant developments occur. And I want a model of that device as soon as it's developed and has had preliminary tests. If it works, it might be valuable for community defense." He waved a hand.
"That's all."
Bond turned to go, and almost got to the door before Morely called him back.
"Oh, one more thing, Bond. Keep a closer watch on the rest of your people. If any more of them decide to do extra work of any unusual nature, I shall expect an immediate report in full. Don't fail me again. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir." Bond saluted again and made his escape.
Morely watched him disappear, then turned to his communicator. "Get me Field Leader Denton," he ordered.
The pause was slight, then the face of a middle-aged man appeared in the viewsphere.
"Denton," said the district leader, "I want you to keep closer watch on your sector men. Last night I spot-checked Bond, in Fourteen, and I found an irregularity. I'll expect you to endorse the report back, and I'll expect you to tighten down. Keep an especially close eye on this man, Bond."
The field leader's eyebrows raised a little. "Bond, sir? He's one of--"
"Bond. Yes." His superior interrupted forcefully. "And tighten down on all your men. You know how I feel about laxity."
He snapped the communicator off and gathered Bond's report together. For a few seconds, he looked at the neat stack of paper, then he slipped a paper clamp on it and punched his call button.
* * * * *
"There!" Paul Graham straightened from his hunched-over position at the desk. He laid his soldering iron down and massaged the small of his back, grimacing slightly.
"Oh, me! I'll swear my back'll never be the same again. But that ought to do it, at last." He looked at the equipment before him and grinned ruefully.
"Of all the haywire messes. It started out so nice. And it ended up so awful."
The device had started out as a fairly neat assembly, using a headband as a chassis. But the circuitry seemed to have gone out of control. Miniature sub-assemblies hung at all angles from their wires and tiny components were interlaced through the unit, till the entire assembly looked like a wig from a horror play. Graham shook his head, picked up the band; and carefully fitted it, being careful that the contacts touched his forehead and temples properly.
For an instant, he looked a little dazed. Then, he reached up and fumbled for a moment with the controls at the front of the headband. Suddenly, he stopped, an expression of pleasure on his face. He stood for a time, looking at the wall, then looked up at the ceiling. He frowned and looked at his wife, who was anxiously watching him. A smile grew on his face, and she was clearly conscious of the projected thought.
"I told you, Elaine, it can't possibly hurt anyone. Stop worrying about me."
Elaine Graham looked startled. "I didn't, say anything, darling."
Her husband looked at her with an impish grin. She frowned a little, then her eyes widened and her mouth opened a little. She ran at him indignantly.
"It simply isn't decent! You take that thing off, Paul Graham, right now. I won't have you reading my mind!"
Graham laughingly fended her off with one hand as he carefully removed the headband with the other. He set the device gently on the desk, then seized his wife about the waist.
"It works, honey," he said jubilantly. "It really works." He waltzed her away from the desk, to the middle of the living room.
"Of course, I couldn't get anything from anyone but you. It seems to work just as I thought it might--only if you can see the person you want to contact. But I'll bet two people who were acquainted could use two of these things to communicate with each other at any distance. And it may be possible to work out the problem of single-device communication at distance and through obstacles. But that'll have to come later. Right now, this thing works."
"But Paul. I'm afraid. What will they do with something like this? We have so little freedom left now. Why, they won't even let us think privately." She paused, her head turning from side to side as she looked about the apartment.
"You know, Paul, I hardly ever dare go out of this apartment now, they upset me so. And if they're able to read my thoughts, I shan't be safe, even here."
Graham frowned. "True," he admitted. "But somehow, when I had the thing on, I got some funny ideas. I wonder if anyone could really oppress someone he fully understood. I wonder if two people who could fully comprehend each other's point of view could have a really serious disagreement." He picked up the headband, looking at it searchingly.
* * * * *
"And there's another thing," he added. "Unless both parties are wearing the things, vision seems to be essential to any reaction, at least in this model. I tried to get thoughts from the kids and from the Moreno's, upstairs. But there wasn't a thing. And yet, I could get you clearly. Apparently this thing won't work out as a spy device."
"But, are you sure?"
Graham shrugged wryly. "Well ... no," he admitted. "I'll have to finish wiring the other set and try 'em both out before I'll be sure of anything. And it'll take a lot of tests before I'm sure of very much. Now, I've just got some ideas." He frowned thoughtfully.
"Anyway, I can't stop now. They know about the thing, and I've got to finish it--or furnish definite proof it's impractical." He turned back to the desk. "Should be through with the other band in a few minutes. Just have to put in a couple of filters."
He picked up the completed device and turned around again. "Here, Elaine, put this on, will you? See what you get. Try to catch a thought from outside the room."
* * * * *
Dutifully, Elaine Graham accepted the headband. She eyed it doubtfully for a moment, then adjusted it over her hair, setting the contacts on her skin as she had seen her husband do. For a few seconds, she stared at her husband, wide-eyed. Then, she looked away, her eyes focused on infinity.
Graham busied himself with the soldering iron and another headband.
At last, Elaine took the headband off. "It's weird, Paul," she said. "When I was looking at you, I knew everything you were thinking. But when I looked away, there was nothing. It was almost as though I didn't have it on. Only, I seemed to be able to think so much more clearly."
Graham looked up from his work, squinting thoughtfully. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, I noticed that, too, come to think of it. Feedback effect of some sort, I suppose. Have to experiment with that, too, I expect." He turned back to his work.
* * * * *
Elaine put the headband back on and watched him. She felt a complete familiarity with everything he was working on. For the first time, she felt she fully understood this man with whom she had lived for so many years. And the understanding was pleasant. She could comprehend the mysteries of the circuits he was working on. She had always felt slightly neglected when he worked with his equipment, especially since the bureaucracy, who took his results without recompense. Now, she could feel his interest in his work for its own sake. She could sympathize with it. And, with a little study, she felt she could join with him.
Graham straightened again. "It's done," he said. He picked the second headband from the desk and put it on. Abruptly, both he and his wife were aware of a fuzziness in their thoughts and senses. The walls, the floor, and the furniture seemed to blur and waver, like the fantasy world of delirium. He put his hand up and adjusted the controls. The room returned to normal, and their senses were abruptly sharp and clear again. He dropped his hand.
"Outside. See if it'll work when we can't see each other."
"Almost curfew time."
"Only a couple of minutes. Then lights out and sleep."
Elaine walked to the door. She stepped out into the corridor and walked down the steps.
"All right?"
"Perfect! Try the parking lot. Close the door."
She went out of the quarters, crossed the areaway, and stood under the landing slot. Far overhead, a segment of sky appeared between the open bomb shutters. Stars shone coldly. She was conscious of a movement and looked down, toward a shadow which moved among the parked helicopters.
"What's that?"
She looked more closely at the shadow, then shuddered a little.
"Never mind." The thought was urgent. "Come inside. I got him, too."
* * * * *
Quickly, Elaine walked back into the apartment. She closed the door and walked to the desk, removing the headband as she approached. Her husband put his headband beside it.
"We'd better get to bed," he said quietly. "I'll notify them tomorrow."
"No, Paul. It would be harder then. And there would be so many questions. Call the sector leader tonight. We'll have to get it over." Elaine shivered.
"But what will they do with it?" She asked the question almost despairingly.
Graham shook his head. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I started with the idea of simply building a really effective communicator. But this is more than that. To you and I, it meant full understanding. But to that person out there ... I don't know."
"His thoughts were flat--almost lifeless. And he made my skin crawl. Paul, do you remember how you used to feel when you came close to a snake? There's something wrong with that man."
"I know. I felt it, too. And it made the blood rush into my ears." Graham moved toward the communicator, placing his hand on the switch. "And you're right. I'll have to report immediately. They don't really need telepathy. And certainly, they never required real evidence. A suspicion is sufficient, and they'd be very suspicious if I didn't notify the sector leader tonight."
He depressed the switch deliberately, like a man firing a weapon. Then, he dialed a number, and waited.
The sphere lit, to show the face of Harold Bond.
"Oh, Graham." Bond frowned a little. "It's late. Do you have something to report?"
"Yes, sir." Graham's face was expressionless. "The mental communicator is finished. Do you wish to test it, sir?"
Bond opened his eyes a little more and nodded. "It's really done, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'll be there in a few minutes." The sphere darkened.
Graham looked at it. De-energized, the communicator seemed to be merely a large ball of clear material. It stood on its low pedestal, against its black background, reflecting a distorted picture of the chiaroscuro of the room. He leaned toward it, and saw a faint, deformed reflection of his own head and shoulders.
He spread his hands a little, and turned around. Elaine had crossed to the divan, where she sat, looking apathetically at the door, her hands folded in her lap. He smiled apprehensively, coughed, and held up a hand, two fingers crossed.
Elaine glanced at him, nodded, and resumed her watch of the door. Graham shrugged and walked over to his desk, where he stood, aimlessly looking down at the two headbands.
* * * * *
They both jumped convulsively when the buzzer sounded. Graham strode rapidly to the door, opened it, and stood back as the sector leader came in. Elaine had come to her feet, and stood rigidly, facing the door.
Sector Leader Bond closed the door, then looked from one of them to the other. He shook his head a little sadly, and waved a hand gently back and forth.
"Relax, you two," he said. "I'm alone this time." He turned to Graham. "Let's see what we've got."
Graham walked to his desk and picked up the two headbands.
"They're a little rough-looking, sir," he apologized. "But they work."
Bond tossed his head back with a little laugh. "They do look a little rugged, don't they?" he chuckled. "Well, we'll worry about appearance later. Right now, I'm curious. I want to see what these things do."
Graham handed over one of the bands and slowly adjusted the other to his head. For a moment, he looked searchingly at the sector leader, then his face relaxed into a relieved expression.
"Hear me?"
Bond had been examining the device in his hands. He looked up, puzzled.
"Of course I hear you," he said. "I'm not deaf."
Graham smiled a little, then placed a hand tightly over his mouth.
"Still get me?"
Bond cocked his head to one side, looked down at the device in his hands, then looked up again. "Well," he commented. "So that's the way they work. I thought you spoke."
Graham shook his head. "Didn't have to. Try it on."
Bond shrugged. "Well, here we go." He pulled off his cap, tossed it to a chair, and replaced it with the headband. For a moment, he looked around the apartment, then he glanced at Mrs. Graham. He blinked, ducked his head, and looked more closely at her.
"Ow! Nobody could be as bad as that!" He looked at Graham. "What do you think?"
"There's one outside." Graham inclined his head a little.
Elaine Graham sprang to her feet. "I'm terribly sorry," she apologized contritely. "It's just that I--"
Bond took off the headband abruptly. "I'm sorry, too," he said. "I was prying." He looked down at the device. "I'm not too sure about this thing," he added. "It works. I can see that much. But I'm almost afraid it works too well. What's it going to cause?"
Graham pulled off his own headband and extended his hand for the other. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "I'm not sure of anything at all." He frowned. "Wish I hadn't--" He looked at the sector leader quickly.
"I'm sorry, sir," he apologized. "Forgot my training, I guess."
Bond waved a hand. "Look," he said, "there are times, and there are places. Right now, I'm in your home, and I'm just as worried about this as you are. I'm just another person." He looked down at his neat uniform.
"Once," he mused, "we were all just people. Now--" He shrugged. "And then, these things come along." He looked at the two headbands, then at the man holding them.
"Wonder how many people feel like that?"
Graham held out the headbands. "I know one way to find out."
Bond nodded. "I see what you mean," he admitted. "But it could be pretty bad." He walked over to the chair and picked up his cap.
"Well," he added with a sigh, "I suppose I'd better grab these things and take them over to Research. Have to find out all we can about them. I've still got to report on them." Again, he looked at Graham. "You'd better come along, too. Research people might have a lot of questions, and I could never answer them."
* * * * *
Graham nodded and went to the hall closet. He took his coat from the hanger, put it on, and reached for his hat, then hesitated.
"You know," he said, "we might try one experiment, right here."
"Oh?" Bond raised his eyebrows.
"There's a man out in the parking lot. I believe he's detailed to keep watch on me. You might try him with one of the headbands. Then, see what he'll do with one on."
"Any special reason?"
Graham twisted his face uneasily. "I can't describe it," he said almost inaudibly. "You'd have to see for yourself."
Bond looked at him speculatively for a moment, then held out his cap and one of the headbands.
"Here, hold these."
He put the other headband on, accepted the first, and walked out of the apartment, followed by Graham, who still carried the cap.
As they came out and started across the parking lot, a man approached them.
Bond looked at him, frowned, then cast a sidelong look at Graham.
"That what you meant?" His thought carried an undercurrent of incredulity.
Graham nodded wordlessly, and Bond looked toward the approaching man again. Once more, his face wrinkled distastefully, then he spoke aloud.
"Oh, Ross. Want you to try some thing." He held out the headband he was carrying in his left hand.
Ross came up, accepted the device, and looked at it curiously. "You mean this is the thing he's been working on?" He jerked a thumb at Graham. "Saw his wife come out a while ago. Guess she had one of 'em on. She went right back in again."
Bond nodded. "This is it," he said. "Let's see how it works for you."
Ross shrugged. "Try anything once, I guess." He adjusted the band to his head, then stood, looking at the two men.
"Notice anything?" Bond looked at him sharply.
Again, Ross shrugged. "Nothing special," he said with a slight grunt. "Seems as though this guy's pretty nervous."
"You don't have to say anything, just think it. And see if you can communicate with Graham."
"Huh?" Ross had been looking directly at Bond. He frowned.
"You mean, this thing--" He paused, looking for a moment at Graham, then took the headband off. "Thing doesn't feel good," he complained. He held the device out to Bond, who accepted it.
"But it works? You could communicate both ways with it?"
"Oh, sure." Ross nodded grudgingly. "I got you, all right. But I couldn't get a thing out of this guy." He wagged his head toward Graham. "Except he was jittery about something."
"I see. Thanks." Bond accepted the headband. "We're going to take these to Research," he added. "Let the technicians there find out how good they are." He turned away and led Graham to his helicopter.
As Graham settled in the seat, he turned to the sector leader. "He just couldn't use it properly," he remarked. "Maybe only certain people can use them."
Bond nodded as he started the motor. "Or maybe only certain people can't." He busied himself in getting the machine up through the landing slot, then turned as they climbed into the night sky.
"Maybe you've got to be able to understand and like people before you can establish full contact with them. Maybe ... Maybe a lot of things." He was silent for a moment. "You know, this thing might become far more valuable than you thought, Graham."
* * * * *
Howard Morely looked up from a memo as the clerk tapped on the door.
"Come in."
The man opened the door and stepped inside.
"Sector Leader Bond is here, sir. He has some gentlemen with him."
"And what does he want?"
"He said it was about that new communicator, sir."
"Oh." Morely turned his attention back to the memo. "Have them wait." He waved a hand in dismissal and went on with his reading.
The beautification program was progressing well. Twenty miles of the old main highway through the valley had been completely cleared and planted. Crews were working on another stretch. The foreman of the wrecking crew down at the point, in Sector Nine, reported that the last bit of scrap had been removed from the old bridge support. Underwater crews had salvaged the cables and almost all of the metal from the fallen bridge itself, and the scrap was on the beach, ready for delivery to the reclamation mills in District One.
Morely smiled sourly. Harwood would have a storage problem on his hands in a day or so. The delay in delivery could be explained and justified. Morely had seen to that. Now, all the material was ready and could be delivered in one lot.
Harwood would have to raise his production quota in his community mills to use up the excess material, and that would slow down the clean-up in District One. The Old Man couldn't help but notice, and he'd see who was efficient in his region. The district leader pushed the memo sheets aside and placed his hands behind his head.
Slowly, he pivoted his chair, to look at the entertainment screen. He started to energize it, then drew his hand back.
So that crackpot, Graham, had finally come up with something definite. Morely smiled again. It had almost seemed as though the man had been stalling for a while. But the pressure and the veiled threats had been productive--again.
To be sure, the agents covering that project had reported that the device seemed to be merely another fairly good means of communication--nothing of any tremendous importance. But results had been obtained, and a communicator which was reasonably free from interception and which required relatively low power might be of some value to the community. He might be able to get a commendation out of it, at least.
And even if it were unsuitable for defense, there'd be a new product for one of the luxury products plants in the district, and the district would get royalties from the manufacturer. Too, it would keep people busy and make 'em spend more of their credits.
He grimaced at his vague reflection in the screen before him, and spoke aloud.
"That's the way to get things done. Make 'em know who's in charge. And let 'em know that no nonsense will be tolerated. Breathe down their necks a little. They'll produce." He cleared his throat and spun around, to punch the button on his desk.
* * * * *
The door opened and the clerk stood, respectfully awaiting orders.
"Send in Bond and the people with him."
The clerk stepped back, turning his head.
"You may go in now, sir." He disappeared around the door.
Harold Bond stepped through the doorway, followed by two men. Morely looked at them closely. Engineers, he thought.
"What have you got?" he demanded.
One of the men opened a briefcase and removed a large, dully gleaming band. Apparently, it was made of plastic, or some light alloy, for he handled it as though it weighed very little.
As the man laid it on the desk, Morely examined the object closely. It was large enough to go on a man's head, he saw. It had adjustable straps, which could be used to hold it in place, and there were a few spring-loaded contacts, which apparently were meant to rest against a wearer's forehead and temples.
A few tiny knobs protruded from one side of the band, and a short wire, terminated by a miniature plug, depended from the other.
The engineer dipped into his brief case again, to produce a small, flat case with a long wire leading from it. He put this by the headband, and connected the plugs.
"The band, sir," he explained, "is to be worn on the head." He pointed to the flat case. "To save weight in the band, we built a separate power unit. It can be carried in a pocket. We've tested the unit, sir, and it does provide a means of private communication with anyone within sight, or with a group of people. Two people, wearing the headbands, can communicate for considerable distances, regardless of obstacles."
"I see." Morely picked up the headband. "Do you have more than one of these?"
"Yes, sir. We made four of the prototypes and tested them thoroughly." Bond stepped forward. "I sent a report in on them yesterday."
"Yes, yes. I know." Morely waved impatiently. He examined the headband again. "And you say it provides communication?"
"Yes, sir."
"No chance of interception?"
Bond shook his head. "Well," he admitted, "if two people are in contact, and a third equipped person wishes to contact either one, he can join the conversation."
"So, it's easier to tap than a cable circuit, or even a security type radio circuit." Morely frowned. "Far from a secure means of communication."
"Well, sir, if anyone cuts in on a communication, both parties know it immediately."
Morely grunted and shook his head. "Still not secure," he growled. He looked at the papers on his desk. "Oh, put one on. We'll see how they work." He leaned back in his chair.
* * * * *
Bond turned to the man with the brief case, who held out another headband. The sector leader fitted it to his head, plugged in the power supply and looked around the room. Finally, he glanced at his superior. A shadow of uncertainty crossed his face, followed by a quickly suppressed expression of distaste.
Morely watched him. "Well?" he demanded impatiently, "I don't feel or see anything unusual."
"Of course not, sir," explained Bond smoothly. "You haven't put on the other headband yet."
"Oh? I thought you could establish communication with only one headset, so long as you were in the same room."
Bond smiled ingratiatingly. "Only sometimes, sir. Some people are more susceptible than others."
"I see." Morely looked again at the headband, then set it on his head. One of the engineers hurried forward to help him with the power pack, and he looked around the room, becoming conscious of slight sensations of outside thought. As he glanced at the engineers, he received faint impressions of anxious interest.
"Can you receive me, sir?"
Morely looked at Bond. The younger man was staring at him with an intense expression on his face. The district leader started to speak, then remembered and simply thought the words.
"Of course I can. Didn't you expect results?"
"Oh, certainly, sir. Do you want me to go outside for a further test?"
The headband was bothering Morely a little. Unwanted impressions seemed to be hovering about, uncomfortably outside the range of recognition. He took the device off and looked at it again.
"No," he said aloud. "It won't be necessary. It's obvious to me that this thing will never be any good for practical application in any community communications problem. It's too vague. But it'll make an interesting toy, I suppose. Some people might like it as a novelty, and it'll give them some incentive to do extra work in order to own one. That's what luxury items are for. And the district can use any royalty funds it may generate."
He laid the headband on his desk. "Go ahead and produce a few samples. Offer the designs to Graham's employer. He can offer them on the luxury market, if he wishes, and we'll see what they do. If people want them, it might be profitable, both for the district and for Consolidated." He shrugged.
"No telling what'll make people spend their credits." He started to nod a dismissal, then hesitated.
"Oh, yes. I think I'll keep this one," he added. "And you might leave a couple more. The regional director might be amused by them."
He accepted the two headbands and their power packs, put them in a desk drawer, and sat back to watch the three men leave the office.
* * * * *
After the door closed, he still sat, idly staring at the headband on his desk. He put it on his head again, then sat, looking about the room. There was no unusual effect, and he took the band off again, looked at it sourly, and laid it down.
Somehow, when Bond and those other two had been in the room, he had sensed a vague feeling of expectancy. Those three had seemed to be enthusiastic and hopeful about something, he was sure. But he failed to see what. This headband certainly showed him nothing.
He stared at the band for a while longer, then put it back on and punched the call button on his desk. As his clerk came into sight, he watched the man closely. There was a slight effect. He could sense a vague fear. And a little, gnawing hatred. But nothing was definite, and no details of thought came through. He shrugged.
Of course the man was fearful. He probably was reviewing his recent mistakes, wondering which one he might be called upon to explain. Too bad his mind wasn't clear enough to read. But what could you expect? Possibly, he could drive Research into improving the device later.
"Anyway," he told himself, "everyone has something they're afraid of. It's natural. And everyone has their pet hates, too." For an instant, he thought of Harwood.
He focused his mind on a single thought. "Get me the quarters file for Sector Nine."
There was a definite effect this time. There was a sharp radiation of pained surprise. Then, there was acquiescence. The clerk started to say something, then backed toward the door. The impression of fear intensified. Morely smiled sardonically. The thing was an amusing toy, at that. He might find uses for it.
He sat back, thinking. He could use it as a detector. Coupled with shrewd reasoning, well-directed questions, and his own accurate knowledge of human failings, it could tell him a great deal about his people and their activities.
For instance, a question about some suspicious circumstance would cause a twinge of fear from the erring person. And that could be detected and localized. Further questions would produce alternate feelings of relief and intensified fear. He nodded complacently. Very little had ever gotten by him, he thought. But from now on, no error would remain undiscovered or unpunished.
The clerk returned to place the file drawers convenient to his superior's desk. He hesitated a moment, his eyes on the headband, then picked up the completed papers from the desk and went out.
Morely riffled through the cards, idly checked a few against his notes, and leaned back again. The file section seemed to be operating smoothly. He looked at his desk. Everything that had to be done immediately was done. And the morning was hardly more than half over.
He rose to his feet. Surely, somewhere in the headquarters, there must be some sort of trouble spot. Somewhere, someone was not producing to the fullest possible. There must be some loose end. And he'd find it. He went out, jerking a thumb back at his office as he passed his clerk's desk.
"You can pick up those files again, Roberts. And see to it that my office gets cleaned up a little. I won't be back for a while."
He went out, to walk down the corridor to the snack bar.
* * * * *
There were a few girls there. He walked by their table, glancing at their badges. Communications people. He nodded to himself, ordered coffee, and chose a table.
As he glanced at the girls' table, he could detect a current of uneasiness. They'd probably been fooling away more time than they should. Too bad he couldn't get more definite information from their thoughts. Like to know just how long they had been there. He tilted his wrist, taking a long look at his watch. The current of uneasiness increased. No doubt to it, they'd been more than ten minutes already.
The girls hurriedly finished their coffee and left. Morely sipped at his own cup.
At last, he got up and went out. Might be a good idea to visit the Fixed Communications Section. Looked as though there might be a little laxity there.
As he walked down the corridor, he mentally reviewed the operation of communications. There was Fixed Communications, responsible for communicator service to all the offices and quarters in the district, as well as to the various commercial organizations. There were also Mobile Comm, Warning, Long Lines, and Administrative Radio.
Of these, the largest was Fixed Communications, with its dial equipment, its banks of video amplifiers, the network of cables, and the substation equipment. It would take days to thoroughly check all their activities. But the office was the key to the entire operation. He could check their records, and get a clue to their efficiency. And he could question the section chief.
He took the elevator to the communications level and walked slowly along the hallway, glancing at the heavy steel door leading to Warning as he passed it. That could be checked later, though there would be little point to it.
It had always annoyed him to think of the operators in that section. They simply sat around, doing nothing but watch their screens and keep their few, piddling records. They did nothing productive, but they had to be retained. Actually, he had to admit, they were a necessity under present conditions. War was always a possibility and the enemy was building up his potential. He might strike at any time, and he'd certainly not send advance notification. If he did strike, the warning teams would perform their brief mission, alerting the active, working members of the defense groups. Then, they would be available for defense. And the defense coördinators required warning teams and equipment in prescribed districts. His was one of these.
He grumbled to himself. Even the number of operators and their organization were prescribed. This was a section, right within his own district, where he had little authority. And it was irritating. Drones, that's what they were.
He continued to the Fixed Communications office. Here, at least, he had authority.
He walked through the door, casting a quick glance at the office as he entered. The section chief got up from his chair, and came forward. Morely felt a little glow of satisfaction as he detected the now familiar aura of uneasiness. Again, he wished this device he wore were more effective. He would like to know the details of this man's thoughts.
* * * * *
"Good morning, sir." The Fixed Communication chief saluted.
Morely returned the salute perfunctorily, then examined the man critically.
"Morning," he acknowledged. "Kirk, I want you to get some new uniforms. You look like a rag bag."
A little anger was added to the uneasiness. Kirk looked down at his clothing. It wasn't new, but there was actually little wrong, other than the slight smudge on a trouser leg, and a few, small spots of dullness on his highly polished boots.
"I've been inspecting some cable vaults, sir," he explained. "We had a little trouble, due to ground seepage."
"It makes no difference," the district leader snorted, "what you've been doing. A man in your position should be properly attired at all times." He paused, looking Kirk over minutely. "If your cable vaults are in such bad condition, get them cleaned up. When I look your installations over, I shall expect them to be clean. Clean, and in order."
He looked beyond Kirk. "And get that desk cleared. A competent man works on one thing at a time and keeps his work in order. A place for everything, and everything in its place, you know. You don't need all that clutter. Is the rest of your office as disorderly as this?"
He looked disparagingly about the small room, then turned toward the door to the main communications office. Kirk moved to open the door.
At one side of the large office was a battery of file cabinets. Four desks were arranged conveniently to them. Morely looked at this arrangement.
"What's this?"
"Billing and Directory, sir. These are the master files of all fixed communication subscribers. From them, we make up the semiannual directory, its corrective supplements, and the monthly bills."
Morely frowned at the desks and files, then looked at the clerks, who were bent over their desks. As one of the girls straightened momentarily, he recognized her. He'd seen her earlier, in the snack bar. He looked more closely at her desk. She had reason, he thought for that radiation of uncertain fear he could sense.
"What's in those files?" he demanded.
"It's a complete index to all subscribers, sir." Kirk looked a little surprised. Morely recognized that the man thought the question a little foolish. He cleared his throat growlingly.
"Let's see one of those cards."
Kirk walked to the file, pulled a small envelope at random, and held it out. The district leader examined it.
"Hah!" he snorted. "I thought so. Duplication of effort. This has nothing on it that isn't in my quarters and locator files."
"There's billing information on the back, sir," Kirk, pointed out. "And current charge slips are kept in the envelope. We use these to prepare the subscriber bills, as well as to maintain the directory service. It's a convenience file, to speed up our work."
Morely turned the envelope over in his hands. "Oh, yes." He opened the envelope, to look at the slips inside. "How do you get the information for these?"
"The charge slips come from Long Lines, sir." Kirk paused. "We get billing information for basic billing from the counters in the dial machine. The other information comes from installation reports and from the quarters file section and the locator files."
* * * * *
Morely handed the envelope back.
"I can see, Kirk," he said, "that you've built up a whole subsection of unnecessary people here." He stepped over to the file cabinets, examined their indices, then pulled a drawer open. He pulled his notebook out, consulted its entries, and searched out an envelope. For a moment, he compared it with the notebook. Then, he turned, holding out the envelope.
"And you don't even keep your information current," he accused. "This man was transferred yesterday afternoon, to another sector. You still show him at his old quarters, with his old communicator code."
"We haven't that information from Files yet, sir," protested Kirk. "They send us a consolidated list of changes daily, but it generally doesn't come in till thirteen hundred."
Morely dropped the envelope on one of the desks.
"Quarters Files can handle this entire operation," he declared, "with a little help from Fiscal. And they can handle it far better than your people here." He stopped for a moment, thinking, then continued. "Certainly," he decided, "Fiscal can take care of your billing. They handle the funds anyway, in the final analysis. And you can coördinate your directory work with the chief clerk at Files. You've got excess people here, Kirk. We don't need any of them."
He looked at the desks and felt a wave of consternation. Kirk spread his hands.
"But we have the information we need close at hand, sir. Our directory has been coming out on time, and in accurate condition. And our billing is well organized. The directory and billing are my respons--"
Morely waved a hand, then tapped himself on the chest with a long forefinger. "The entire operation of this headquarters is my responsibility, Kirk," he said positively, "and mine alone. And I mean to take care of it. You're responsible to me that Fixed Communications are kept in order, and I don't mean to relieve you of a bit of that responsibility. But I won't have you making jobs and wasting funds on excess personnel." He snorted. "Convenience files are all right. But they're meant to save work, not make it."
Kirk shook his head. "A decentralization will make it difficult," he began.
Again, Morely cut him off. "Don't start telling me why you can't do something," he snapped. "Work out a way you can do it. Make up plans for transferring this filing function to Quarters Files, and work up a plan for transferring your billing to Fiscal. That's their business, and they know how to handle it. Submit your study to me this afternoon." He looked around the office again.
"The people in Files and Fiscal can handle this workload without adding a single person. And they will. You're using four clerks to swing it. Kirk, I want this organization to run efficiently, and excess personnel don't lead to economic operation." He stared at the section chief.
"Give these four people their notices today, and I'll expect some suggestions from you as to further streamlining of your section within the next two days. And be sure they're sound suggestions, which result in personnel savings. Otherwise, I'll be looking for a new section chief up here."
For a few seconds, he stood, enjoying the waves of consternation and futile anger which beat about him. Almost, he could pick up some of the despairing thoughts in detail. The clerks, of course, were second-class citizens. And without employment, they'd soon lose their luxury privileges. Unless they were fortunate enough to find other employment very soon, they'd have to move to subsistence quarters, and learn to do without all but the most meagre of food, clothing, and shelter. When they did get employment again, they'd appreciate it. He looked majestically around the office once more, then turned and strode away.
He went through the corridor to the elevator, and stepped in, smiling contentedly. The morning hadn't been entirely wasted.
As he got out of the elevator on executive level, he glanced at his watch. It wasn't quite time for lunch, but there would be little point in spending the few remaining minutes in his office. He walked slowly toward the executive cafeteria.
* * * * *
After lunch, he returned to his office. A few matters awaited his examination and decision, and he busied himself for a short time, disposing of them. He paused over the last.
It was a request from Kirk for more cable construction. The justification showed figures which indicated an increase in executive type communications during the past few months. This, coupled with new quarters construction, necessitated additions to the cable trunks from the main exchange. There was added a short survey of necessary repair to existing cable facilities.
Morely leaned back. If he approved the request, he would be helping Kirk increase his section. On the other hand, if he disapproved it, and the communicator lines became congested, he might find himself open to criticism later. Some of his satisfaction evaporated. He looked sourly at the paper.
Suddenly, he thought of Bond's new project. The man had claimed this device could serve as a communication means between its wearers, and had demonstrated that his claim had some truth. After noting the slight fatigue the device seemed to cause in this application, and the vagueness of the device's operation, Morely had disregarded the claim. But junior executives could put up with a little fatigue and inconvenience. And he could see that they did. It might even cut down the time they were always wasting, talking with one another. He rubbed his chin with one hand.
"Well," he told himself, "let's see how it works."
From the way Bond had acted in his office, the sector leader might be still wearing his headband. In fact, he probably was. Morely concentrated on the man, then concentrated on a single, peremptory thought.
"Bond! Can you receive me?"
The answer was prompt. "Yes, sir. You wanted me?"
"Of course, Idiot. Why do you think I called? Do you really believe these things would be suitable for routine communication? Could they supplement our normal system?"
"Certainly, sir. They should be very effective."
"Have you offered them to Consolidated yet?"
"Yes, sir. They've accepted them. They're beginning to tool up for production."
Morely winced. He had given the order, to be sure--and before creditable witnesses. Bond had been right in taking immediate action, and his speed would have been commendable in most cases. But this time, Morely regretted his subordinate's efficiency. It was possible the devices might have a practical use after all. Possibly he had been hasty in releasing them to the open market. He shrugged away his thoughts. After all, an administrator had to make quick decisions. He returned to his unusual conversation.
"Set up a line in research and make up sufficient of those communicators to outfit the executive personnel of this district."
"Yes, sir."
"And give me delivery as soon as you possibly can. How soon will that be?"
"We can do it in five days, sir."
"Make it three. That's all."
Morely took off his headband. It wasn't as good as a communicator sphere, but it would be good enough. He looked at the request from Communications. Possibly, he would be able to cut Kirk down still more. He scrawled a "disapproved" on the sheet and initialed it. He started to toss the sheet to the corner of his desk, then hesitated.
Drawing the request back to him, he added: "Two subjects on same request. Resubmit as separate requests." He tossed the sheet to the desk corner, for the clerk to pick up. Let Kirk make up new requests, then worry about why his new construction request was still disapproved. He could always be advised to resubmit later, if the headbands didn't work out.
* * * * *
Miles away, Bond turned to an engineer.
"Tool up and start producing these communicators as fast as you can make 'em, Morris. I'll tell you when to stop. The Old Man just ordered a batch of 'em, and this is one order I want to comply with, and fast!"
He walked toward the small production office. Let's see, he had to produce enough for all the exec personnel in the district. Have to start finding out just how many of those guys there were.
"Make delivery as soon as possible, huh? Cut my estimate by two days? I'll have 'em out over night, if I have to start driving people to do it."
* * * * *
Morely looked up as the communicator beeped. He reached to the control panel and touched the switch. The face of his deputy appeared in the sphere.
"The section chiefs and field leaders are in the conference room, sir."
"Very good." Morely pushed back his chair. "I'll be right in."
He stepped through the door and crossed the outer office to the conference room. As he entered, there was a rustle of motion. The section chiefs and field leaders stood at attention around the table, waiting. At each place at the table was a blank notepad. The district leader went immediately to the head of the table and sat down.
"Gentlemen," he began, "I'll make this short. I've called you in to try out a new device which I intend to use to help solve the ever-present problem of communication." He looked toward Ward Kirk, who had glanced up in surprise.
"From time to time," he continued, "requests for more and more communicator lines have been coming in to my office. Since no one else seemed to be able to do anything about it, I decided it was time for me to step in. After all, we can't expand our cables indefinitely. We haven't unlimited funds at our disposal and there are other projects demanding attention. Important projects.
"A new electronic development has come to my attention, and it promises to relieve the load on our communicators. Each of you will be issued one of these devices, which I believe are called 'mental communicators,' or something of the sort. And you will draw sufficient of them to outfit those of your people who have occasion to use communication to any large degree. You will use them for all routine communications." He nodded to his deputy, who stepped to the door and beckoned.
Two men came in, carrying cartons, which they distributed around the room. Morely waited until one of the cartons was in the hands of each of the men before him, then he reached up to touch the headband he was wearing.
"This is the device I'm speaking of," he said. "Each of you will wear one of these at all times while you are on duty. You will find, after a little practice, that you will be able to call any associate who is similarly equipped. And you will use them in place of the conventional communications whenever possible." He cleared his throat raspingly.
"Sufficient of these devices have been produced to outfit all the key people of this district. I shall leave it to you to distribute them to your subordinates, and to instruct those subordinates in their use. And I shall expect the load on our communicator cables to be appreciably diminished." He looked to one side of the room.
"Bond."
"Yes, sir."
"You will instruct those present in the use of this new communicator." Morely rose and left the room.
* * * * *
As the district leader disappeared through the door, Harold Bond walked to the front of the room. In his hands, he held one of the headbands and a power pack.
"Gentlemen," he said, "this is a form of communicator. I don't pretend to understand precisely how it operates, though I watched its development and set up a production line for it. All I know is that it works. And I know how to use it--to some extent.
"The district leader remarked that one could learn to use it with a little practice, and he's right. Basically, anyone can use it as soon as he puts it on for the first time. But it's like so many other tools. The more you use it, the more proficient you get with it. And I suspect it has capabilities I haven't found yet." He shrugged.
"Operation is simple in the extreme. Since the first model, refinements have been added, and it's unnecessary now for an operator to make any adjustments, other than intensity."
He picked up the power pack.
"This is the power pack, which is plugged into the headband, thus." He paused as he connected the two plugs.
"If you gentlemen will perform the operations as I do, this will take only a short time."
There was a crackling in the room as cartons were opened. Power packs and headbands rattled against the table for a moment, then Bond continued.
"Having plugged in the power pack, you turn this small knob very slightly in a clockwise direction, then place the headband on your head. The knob is the switch and intensity control, and it's quite sensitive. Most people need very little intensity. If you have difficulty with communication, raise the intensity a little at a time, till thoughts come through clearly." He paused, as the men before him adjusted the headbands to their heads.
"The power pack," he continued, "may be placed in a pocket." He reached down. "Personally, I carry mine in my shirt, since I find that convenient."
He looked around the room. Men were turning to stare at their neighbors. Bond could detect a current of uncertainty, then a sensation of pleased surprise. Snatches of thought drifted to him. He ignored them for the moment. Time enough to become acquainted with people later. He placed a hand over his mouth, so everyone could see he was not speaking.
"Can everyone receive me?"
There was a wave of affirmation, and Bond nodded.
"Simple, isn't it? Are there any questions?"
A jumble of thoughts made him waver. Most of them could have been phrased, "How does this thing work? What does it do? Am I dreaming?" Bond smiled in real amusement. He held up a hand.
"I felt the same way," he thought reassuringly. "Sometimes. I still do. All I can tell you is what you've already found out for yourselves. It works. I'm told it's a sort of telepathic amplifier and radiator. But as I told you, I don't understand its principles. As to practice? I'm still meeting interesting people. So will you." He took off the headband.
"If anyone has any further questions on operation, I'll try to answer them," he thought quickly. He glanced around the room. Three men were looking at him blankly. He took careful note of them, and mentally shook hands with himself. They were the ones he'd thought would blank out. He spoke aloud.
"I'm sorry, gentlemen," he apologized. "I forgot I might be out of communication. I'm not completely used to this mentacom, myself." He looked toward the deputy leader.
"Do you have anything to add, sir?"
The deputy shook his head. "No," he said thoughtfully. "I think the demonstration was adequate. He cast a quizzical look at Bond, then looked around the room.
"You gentlemen will find a supply of these devices in the outer office. You may draw one for each person you wish outfitted. If any of you have further questions, I would suggest you get in touch with Community Research. They understand this thing." He waved toward the door. "This meeting is adjourned."
He watched as the men filed from the room, then turned on Bond.
* * * * *
"What was that business after you took off your headband?" he demanded. "I received you perfectly, and so did practically everyone here. Why the apology?"
Bond grimaced. "We found out something peculiar while we were making preliminary tests on this device, sir," he explained. "Some people don't seem to be able to pick up clear thoughts with it, unless another person uses the mentacom to drive in to them. Most of us can pick up thoughts from anyone we look at, whether they have a band on or not. Definite, surface thoughts, that is."
"And?" The deputy's expression was still questioning. He reached up to point at the band he was still wearing. "I'm getting some mighty peculiar secondary thoughts right now," he added.
"And the people who can't use the device fully have other peculiarities, sir. I'd rather not go into detail. You can find out the whole story for yourself with a very short bit of experimentation, and you have a subject right at hand. If I simply told you, you probably wouldn't believe me anyway."
The deputy nodded slowly. "For the moment," he said, "I'll take your words--and your thoughts--as true. Now, one more question: Can a person, using one of these things, successfully lie to another person who wears one?"
"No, sir." Bond was positive. "It's impossible."
"I got that impression. Thanks." The deputy turned and walked out of the door. Bond looked after him, a slight smile growing on his lips.
"Old Man wanted 'em," he told himself. "He's got 'em."
* * * * *
The Fiscal chief glanced through the letter in his hands, then canted his head a little and read again. He lowered it to his desk, then sat for a moment, to stare into space. Finally, he looked down once more.
Central Coördination Agency Office of the Comptroller
CCA 7.338 21 July, 2012
To: District Leader District Twelve Region Nine
Attn.: Fiscal Chief
Subject: Mental Communicator
1. It has been brought to the attention of this office that a product known as the "Consolidated Mental Communicator" is being manufactured in District Twelve, Region Nine, and offered for sale as a luxury item.
2. The characteristics of this device have been investigated by the Technical Division, Central Coördination Agency, and it has been found that the device does in fact permit communication between persons by telepathic or some similar means.
3. This device is presently being offered for sale in retail luxury stores throughout the nation. The volume of sales and of potential sales warrants distribution of the manufacturing load to manufacturers other than the Consolidated Electronics Company, who, it is understood, presently hold an exclusive manufacturing agreement with the office of the District Leader, District Twelve, Region Nine. This arrangement is inconsistent with the sales and use potential of the device in question.
4. The agreement between District Twelve, Region Nine, and the Consolidated Electronics Company will be forwarded immediately to this headquarters for consideration. It is contemplated that this agreement will be terminated and replaced by a manufacturing license from the Products Division, Central Coördinating Agency, who will further license other manufacturers to produce this device.
By Command of Chief Coördinator Gorman
KELLER Comptroller MRK/pem
The Fiscal chief shook his head. This one spelled trouble--in capitals. The royalty payments from Consolidated had become one of the major sources of income for the district. And Morely had ordered project after project, using those funds to pay for them. Some of the projects were still outstanding. The Old Man would blow his top.
He looked again at the small scrap of paper which was clipped to the letter. On it was scrawled: "DeVore--See me--HRM."
For a moment, DeVore considered using his own mentacom, then he discarded the idea. To be sure, the leader had insisted that his subordinates use the devices for their own communications, and he'd cut Fixed Communications to the bone. But he still insisted on either communicator calls or personal contact when he wished to talk to any of his people. And he discouraged any but essential use of the communicator system, generally demanding that people come in to see him.
DeVore wrinkled his face disgustedly. It was hard to communicate with the district leader by means of a headband. There was a repellent characteristic about the man's mental emanations, and he seemed to fail to comprehend nuances of meaning. Similes, he ignored completely. Thoughts had to be completely and clearly detailed, then phrased into normal, basic wordage before he would acknowledge them. None of the short-cuts used by other members of the administrative staff seemed to work out in his case. He apparently didn't notice visualizations, and he never made one. His transmission was as stiff and labored as the type of communication he required from others--more so, if anything. DeVore scratched his neck.
"How," he asked himself, "does one define a telepathic monotone?"
There were a few others with whom DeVore had experienced similar difficulties, but most people, he had found, picked up meanings and concepts without difficulty--even seemed to anticipate at times. And since the new induction mentacoms had come on the market, with the annoying contacts and headstraps removed, virtually everyone seemed to be either in possession of one of the devices, or about to get one. And, they were worn everywhere.
He smiled as he thought of the young father-to-be, who had bored through the evening traffic rush yesterday. The youngster had been so intent on getting his wife to the hospital that he'd probably failed to see half the ships that clawed out of his way. And his visualization had been almost painfully clear. He'd probably be apologizing for weeks to everyone he contacted.
DeVore straightened in his chair. What would happen, he wondered, if the leader ever ran into one of those situations?
"Yipe!" he muttered. "What a row that would be."
He shrugged, got out of his chair, and walked out into the corridor.
"Better get it over with," he told himself.
* * * * *
As he approached the leader's door, it opened, and Ward Kirk came out. He closed the door with a careful gentleness, then faced it for an instant. DeVore was conscious of a wave of hopeless fury, and a fleeting glimpse of Morely's face, framed by brilliant flame. Then, Kirk faced around and saw him.
"Careful," DeVore thought. "You're broadcasting. He'll pick you up."
Kirk grimaced and DeVore saw a faint image of a tyrannosaur, which reared up, jaws agape. Blood dripped from the human figure gripped in the creature's talons.
"The old ... wouldn't understand if he did."
DeVore grinned. "See what you mean. Well, guess I'm the next victim."
He stepped to the door and tapped.
"Come in."
Morely looked up as his Fiscal Chief entered, then swept some papers aside. "Well, what do you want?"
DeVore held out the letter. "You wanted to see me, sir, about this." He placed the paper within the reach of his superior, who snatched at it, held it up for a moment, then dropped it to his desk.
"Yes, I did. What can we do about it?"
"Why," DeVore spread his hands slightly, "we'll have to comply."
"That isn't what I meant, Idiot! How can we continue to receive the payments from Consolidated?"
"I don't think we can, sir. If Central Coördinating wants to put the device on a national basis, we can't do anything about it."
Morely looked down at the letter, then glared searchingly at DeVore. "The way I read this," he declared, "they want to distribute manufacturing rights on the communicator to plants in other regions than this. Right?"
"Yes, sir."
"But they don't say anything about our continuing the Consolidated payments on an overwrite basis, for the sale of devices they may make. Now, do they?"
"No, sir. But that's implied. In cases like this, Central always takes over all rights." DeVore hesitated. "I believe regulations--"
"I don't care what's implied, DeVore. And I don't care what you believe. All I see is what's in this letter. They want to distribute the manufacturing load, and I'm quite willing that they should. I want to continue receiving the payments from Consolidated. Now, you arrange it so that they're satisfied and I'm satisfied."
"But that'll mean Consolidated will have to pay double. We can't--"
"Don't say 'can't' to me!" Morely held up a hand angrily. "DeVore, I'm not going to tell you how to do this. I want it done. The details are your affair, and if I have to teach you your business, I'll get someone who can do things without having to have them spelled out to him." He leaned back, to glare at DeVore.
"Now, get on the job. I told you to make arrangements for me so that we will retain our payments from Consolidated. And I'm not interested in what arrangements you make with them, or what arrangements they make with Central. Is that a simple enough order for you to understand?"
"Yes, sir. I understand all right. But--"
"Good! I'm glad I managed to get at least one simple idea into your head." The spring in the chair twanged as Morely came forward, to poke his head at DeVore. "Now, get to work on it."
He jerked his head down for a quick look at the letter on his desk, then looked up again.
"And I'll expect a report from you by tonight that you've got the matter taken care of."
DeVore looked at his superior expressionless for a heartbeat. He had been given peculiar orders before, and he'd always managed to work out the problems involved. But this was the ultimate. This one seemed to be just plain illegal. And there was no point in arguing further. There was just the barest chance that there might be some legitimate way out. If he challenged the Old Man on an illegal order, he just might get his ears pinned back. He'd simply have to go back to his office and try to hunt out a technicality. He nodded.
"Yes, sir. I'll get on it immediately."
He saluted and started to leave the office. But he didn't make it.
"And, DeVore!"
The Fiscal chief halted abruptly, and turned.
"Sir?"
"I'm getting tired of the negative thinking you people seem to have fallen into lately. I'm sick of going into every routine detail with you. When you got that letter, you should have immediately worked out a method of retaining the royalties. Then, you could have come in and presented it for my approval. That is the kind of work I want. And that's the kind of work I mean to get in the future. Do you understand?"
Sternly, DeVore suppressed a sarcastic thought. He held his mind and face blank and nodded with a semblance of respect.
"Yes, sir."
"Very well." Morely waved a hand. "Now get something done."
* * * * *
As DeVore walked through the corridor, he thought over the situation. Of course, the easy way out would be to force Consolidated to continue the payments in addition to their license fees from Central. That could be done. There were all kinds of methods by which pressure could be brought to bear on any company by the district leader's office. And from Consolidated's point of view, double payments could offer a cheap means of keeping out of difficulties. They would be able to pass most of the cost to the consumer by a slight price increase, justified by a minor modification of the devices.
But they wouldn't be happy about it, and there would come a day when an auditing team from Central would be checking in the district. And that would be the day of days!
DeVore turned in at the door to his own office, crossed the room, and sat down at his desk.
To be sure, he could request a share of the fees from Central, and they'd make an award. But they'd never award more than fifty per cent, and it'd be hard to get that much. That was no good. The Old Man would want the same payments he'd been getting.
Or, he could try to negotiate a new agreement with Consolidated, double the royalties, and then request fifty per cent from Central. He grinned wryly. That would be within legal limits, he was sure, but Central knew the present arrangement, and he knew that they knew. And so would most of the interested manufacturers in other regions. The first-class citizens who owned the plants had their own liaison. They'd all balk. Then, Central would invalidate both old and new agreements and refuse compensation of any kind to district. That would be a suicidal course.
He looked up, thinking of one of the girls out in the legal crew.
"Fiscal regulations, please. And Markowitz on royalties, too."
The girl turned half around, and he could see a faint impression of her view of office details. Then, she went to a book rack. For a few seconds, she glanced over the books, then selected two large volumes.
"Shall I look it up, or do you want the books?"
"I'll take them. Might need quite a bit of research."
Shortly, the girl appeared in his doorway. Quickly, she laid the two volumes on his desk.
DeVore nodded his thanks and opened regulations. Some of the paragraphs were delightfully vague, and could be subject to more than one interpretation. But one paragraph was clear and explicit. And that was the one he was concerned with.
A royalty agreement with, or manufacturing license from Central Coördination definitely abrogated any agreement with, or payment to, any lesser headquarters. Such an agreement or license barred any further negotiation between any lesser headquarters and a manufacturer, relating to the product concerned. Double royalties were prohibited in any case.
He pushed the books aside. There was no need of looking in Markowitz. That regulation paragraph took care of this exact situation, and disposed of it neatly. For an instant, he thought of taking the volume in to the leader's office. Then, he remembered the threatening note in the authoritative voice and the flat, deadly thoughts he had noted as secondaries.
That wouldn't work either. He thought of the undercurrent in Kirk's thoughts. Kirk had been carrying a regulation book, he remembered. He contacted the Fixed Communications chief.
"Don't," he was told. "I tried it. Know what happened?"
"Go ahead."
"He got the regional director on the communicator. I've been transferred to Outpost. They seem to need a cable maintenance chief up there. And I was lucky at that. I started to protest, and they nearly had me for insubordination." Abruptly, Kirk cut away.
* * * * *
DeVore stared unseeingly across the desk. He'd been at Outpost for a short time once, on an inspection trip, and he still remembered the place. At one time, it had been a well supplied, well organized post. At that time, observational duty had been regarded more highly than now, and the place had been desirable for any single officer, though the married men had objected to being separated from their families by the many miles of frozen waste. But that had changed.
Now, Outpost was the end of the line. The dilapidated surface quarters offered poor protection from the fierce cold. Supply ships were rarely scheduled to the place, and were often held up by storms when they were scheduled. Half rations--even quarter rations--were commonplace. He shook his head. Kirk was in real trouble, and there would be no point in joining him. That would help neither of them.
This, he thought, was a situation. Then, he realized something else. From Morely's point of view, it was a perfectly safe situation, with nothing to lose. The district leader could easily disclaim any responsibility for his Fiscal chief's actions in this matter. After all, he hadn't given any detailed instructions. He had made no direct suggestion of any illegal course. He'd merely consulted his Fiscal expert on a technical matter, and if DeVore had seen fit to use an illegal method of solving a problem, it was DeVore's responsibility alone.
To be sure, Morely had been a little emphatic in his order, but that was simply because he was well aware of his Fiscal chief's disinclination to make exhaustive technical research.
DeVore pursed his lips and looked thoughtfully at the regulation book. He might be able to use the same tactic Morely was following--if he were so inclined. He could issue verbal instructions to the sector leader concerned, and Bond might fail to see the trap. Then, he could report to the leader that the matter was taken care of, indorse the letter back to Central, with the agreement copy, and let Bond turn in funds under one of the "miscellaneous received" accounts. In fact, he realized, that was just about what the district leader expected him to do.
He smiled and shook his head. A few months ago, it was possible he could have done that, but even then, he wouldn't have. And now, with the mental communicators in use, it would be a flat impossibility. The trap would be as obvious to Bond as it had been to him. He leaned back in his chair and tapped his fingertips against each other.
The mentacoms, he knew, were in common use by this time, in virtually every office of district, regional, and national administration, as well as by most citizens. And he'd served under Marko Keller once--known him fairly well, too. He shrugged.
It would be a little irregular for a district Fiscal chief to make direct contact with the Coördination Agency's comptroller, but there was nothing like getting the most expert and authoritative advice available. He relaxed, trying to recreate his memories of the man who was now National Comptroller.
* * * * *
Marko Keller strode purposefully into the filing section. He could easily get the data he needed by simply contacting one of the clerks, he knew, but he felt an urgent need for personal activity. That conversation with DeVore, way out in Region Nine, had upset him more than he liked to admit, even to himself.
It wouldn't be so bad if it were an isolated incident. Such things could be taken care of by administrative action, and a single instance would cause little disturbance. But there were too many, happening too often. He pulled a file drawer open, violently.
One of the clerks approached. "Can I help, sir?"
Keller turned to look at him. The man, he noted, was wearing one of the late model inductive headbands that had been sold in such quantities lately. Deluxe model, too. Must have cost him at least two months' pay. Like almost everyone else, he was vitally concerned in this latest affair. Keller frowned. He, himself, he realized, was acting childishly. He would simply be wasting time by trying to do this by himself.
"Yes," he growled. "Get me a brief on a few cases like this one." He made full contact with the man, rapidly summarizing his conversation with DeVore, and including DeVore's short flash of his own conversation with Ward Kirk.
"And get a rundown from personnel. Dig up something on their angle, too. Several representative cases. Get a few people to help you--many as you need. I'm going to take this whole mess in to the Chief tomorrow morning."
* * * * *
Paul Graham swept into the apartment, seized his wife about the waist and swung her into the air, to set her on top of one of his bookcases.
"They've done it, honey," he shouted.
Elaine kicked her heels in a rapid tattoo against the back of the case.
"Paul Graham, you get me down this instant," she ordered indignantly. "Who's done what?"
Graham stepped back and beat on his chest. "Meet the new production manager, Mentacom Division, Consolidated Electronics."
"Production manager? But, Paul, only first-class citizens can hold supervisory positions."
"Not any more. Didn't you have the communicator on for the news? It all came in."
Elaine shook her head and jumped to the floor. "I've a confession to make, Paul. Ever since they stopped the compulsory notices, I haven't had the thing on at all. It bothered me."
Her husband shook his head in mock dismay. "So now, I'm married to an ignoramus." He spread his hands. "She doesn't know what's going on in the great, big world." He shook a finger at her.
"It all busted this afternoon, darling. While you sat around in your splendid isolation, everything turned upside down."
She looked at him indignantly for an instant, then turned toward the kitchen.
"Paul, if you don't stop raving, I'm going to get my mentacom and pry it out of you," she threatened. "Now, you just settle down. Stop talking in circles and tell me what this is all about."
"Oh, all right. If you insist." Graham sank into a chair, looking like a small boy caught in a prank. "First, there are no more first-class citizens--no second-class citizens--not even third-class citizens. Everyone's a citizen again. Period." He threw his hands up.
"You mean--?"
"That's exactly what I mean. No more restrictions. No more compulsory community work. No more quarters inspections. And no more privileges. We've got rights again!
"If you want a dress, you buy it. You don't worry about whether it suits your station. If I can hold a job, I get it. And I did!" He got out of the chair and strode across the room, to sit on the arm of the divan. "And I can do this, if I want to. If I break this thing down, so help me, George, I'll go out and buy a new one." He bounced up and down a little.
"The administrators are going back to their original jobs. They're responsible for defense, in case of enemy attack, and that's all." He paused. "Of course, until sector and district elections can be held, they'll still take care of some of the community functions--some of them, that is. But the elections'll be set up in a few weeks, and we'll be able to choose our own officials for community government."
He bounced to his feet again, strode around the bookcases, and looked down at his desk. Then, he looked around again.
"Corporations are being set up to take over home construction." He held up a hand. "Home construction, I said, not quarters. They're commercializing helicopter manufacture, all kinds of repair work, and a lot of other services. And they're going to restore patent rights. That means plenty to us, darling, believe me."
* * * * *
"But, but why? What happened?"
Graham turned on her. "Elaine," he cried, "haven't you noticed how many people are wearing mentacoms now, all the time? Haven't you noticed the consideration people have been giving each other for the past weeks? Remember what I told you once? If you fully understand a person, you simply can't kick him around. It's too much like taking slaps at yourself. With the exception of a few empathic cripples, who can't use the mentacom properly anyway, everyone, inside the administrative offices, as well as out, recognized that the bureaucracy was simply unworkable as it stood. So, they changed it. Effective immediately."
Elaine stamped her foot. "You know I haven't been out of this apartment," she cried. "And you know why. I simply couldn't stand the treatment I got. I'd have gotten into serious trouble in minutes. So, I've stayed in. I've done my shopping by communicator, and contented myself right here." She paused.
"But how is the new administration going to be supported? What are people going to do? How are they taking it? It's all so sudden, I should think--"
Graham held up a hand.
"Hey," he protested. "One at a time, please! First--remember taxes? Remember how we used to growl about them? They're back. And I love 'em. Second--nobody is going to do anything. Anything drastic or unusual, that is. And finally? Everyone I've seen is taking it in their stride. Seems as though they've been sort of expecting it, ever since they started mind-to-mind communication.
"You'd be surprised how good most people are at it, now that they're used to it. You start into a line of helicopters. All at once, you realize that the guy coming is really in a hurry. He's got to get somewhere, fast. So, you let him go by. The next fellow's not going to be in any tearing rush. He'll let you in, and cheer you on your way.
"You feel like being left alone? Nobody'll even notice you. But if you feel like talking, half a dozen total strangers'll find something in common with you. And they'll discuss it. Honey, you'll be surprised how much you've missed. Get your mentacom. Let's take a little shopping trip."
* * * * *
"And here's one of our more difficult cases. But he's coming along nicely." Dr. Moran pointed through the one-way window.
"Name's Howard Morely. He used to be a district leader, under the bureaucracy. But along in the last few weeks, just before the change, he got into some sort of scrape. They questioned him, and declared him unfit for service. Put him out on a pension." He pulled at an ear.
"Matter of fact, I understand his case had quite a deal to do with the change--sort of triggered it. They tell me it sort of pointed up the fallacies of the bureaucracy." He shrugged.
"But that's unimportant now, I guess. He almost receded into complete paranoia. Had a virtually complete case of empathic paralysis when he came to us. Simply no conception of any other person's point of view, and a hatred of people that was fantastic. But he's nearly normal now."
The visiting psychiatrist nodded. "I've seen the type, of course. We have a number of them, too. You say this new technique was successfully used in his case?"
"Yes. We had doubts of it, too. Seemed too simple. Sure, we're all familiar with the mentacoms by now. Wouldn't be without my own. But the idea of a field generator so powerful as to force clear impressions into a crippled mind like his, without completely destroying that mind, seemed a little fantastic." He shrugged.
"In this case, though, it was a last resort, so we tried it. He resisted the field for days. Simply sat in his cell and stared at the walls. We were almost ready to give up when one of the operators finally got through to him. Know what his first visualization was?"
The visitor shook his head and laughed. "I could try a guess, I suppose," he said, "but my chances would be something less than one in a thousand million."
Moran grinned. "You're so right. There was a whole bunch of kids standing around. Looked like dozens of 'em. And they were all chanting at the top of their voices. You know that old jingle? 'Howie's got a gir-rul?' Chanted it over and over." The grin widened. "Operator said his face stung for ten minutes. That girl must have packed one sweet wallop!"
THE END
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT
by Raymond King Cummings
THEY OPENED THE PANDORA'S BOX OF ATOMIC TRAVEL
When George Randolph first caught sight of Orena, he was astounded by its gleaming perfection. Here were hills and valleys, lakes and streams, glowing with the light of the most precious of metals. And, more astonishing than that, it was a world of miniature perfection--an infinitely tiny universe within a golden atom!
But for Randolph it was also a world aglow with danger. Somewhere in its tiny vastness were the friends he had to rescue. Captives of a madman, they had been reduced to native Orena size; to return to Earth they needed the growth capsules Randolph was bringing them. It was up to Randolph to find them--and quickly--for the longer they stayed tiny, the closer they came to passing BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
FRANZ POLTER He found a gold mine in a land where there was no gold.
DR. KENT His scientific studies could mean life or death to an entire universe!
GEORGE RANDOLPH He crossed the border into Canada, and found himself in another world.
ALAN KENT Twenty feet tall, or two inches high--which should he be?
GLORA She was only as large as a thumbnail, but she carried a gigantic secret.
BABS KENT Did she live in a golden cage or a magnificent palace?
CHAPTER I
It was shortly after noon of December 31, 1970, when the series of weird and startling events began which took me into the tiny world of an atom of gold, beyond the vanishing point, beyond the range of even the highest-powered electric-microscope. My name is George Randolph. I was, that momentous afternoon, assistant chemist for the Ajax International Dye Company, with main offices in New York City.
It was twelve-twenty when the local exchange call-sorter announced Alan's connection from Quebec.
"Hello, George? Look here, you've got to come up here at once. Chateau Frontenac, Quebec. Will you come?"
I could see his face imaged in the little mirror on my desk; the anxiety, tenseness in his voice, was duplicated in his expression.
"Well--" I began.
"You must, George. Babs and I need you. See here...."
He tried at first to make it sound like an invitation for a New Year's Eve holiday. But I knew it was not that. Alan and Barbara were my best friends. They were twins, eighteen years old. I felt that Alan would always be my best friend; but for Babs, my hopes, longings, went far deeper, though as yet I had never brought myself to the point of telling her so.
"I'd like to come, Alan. But--"
"You've got to George! I can't tell you everything over the public air. But I've seen him: He's diabolical. I know it now!"
Him! It could only mean, of all the world, one person!
"He's here!" he went on. "Near here. We saw him today! I didn't want to tell you, but that's why we came. It seemed a long chance, but it's he, I'm positive!"
I was staring at the image of Alan's eyes; there was horror in them. And his voice too. "God, George, it's weird! Weird, I tell you. His looks--he--oh I can't tell you now! Only, come!"
* * * * *
I was busy at the office in spite of the holiday season, but I dropped everything and went. By one o'clock that afternoon I was wheeling my little sport Midge from its cage on the roof of the Metropole building, and went into the air.
It was a cold gray afternoon with the feel of coming snow. I made a good two hundred and fifty miles at first, taking the northbound through-traffic lane which today the meteorological conditions had placed at an altitude of 6,200 feet.
Flying is largely automatic. There was not enough traffic to bother me. The details of leaving the office so hastily had been too engrossing for thought of Alan and Babs. But now, in my little pit at the controls, my mind flung ahead. They had located him. That meant Franz Polter, for whom we had been searching nearly four years. And my memory went back into the past with vivid vision....
* * * * *
The Kents, four years ago, were living on Long Island. Alan and Babs were fourteen at the time, and I was seventeen. Even then Babs was something kind of special to me. I lived in a neighboring house that summer and saw them every day.
To my adolescent mind a thrilling mystery hung upon the Kent family. The mother was dead. Dr. Kent, father of Alan and Babs, maintained a luxurious home, with only a housekeeper and no other servant. Dr. Kent was a retired chemist. He had, in his home, a laboratory in which he was working upon some mysterious problem. His children did not know what it was, nor, of course, did I. And none of us had ever been in the laboratory, except that when occasion offered we stole surreptitious peeps.
I recall Dr. Kent as a kindly, iron-gray haired gentleman. He was stern with the discipline of his children; but he loved them, and was indulgent in many ways. They loved him; and I, an orphan, began looking upon him almost as a father. I was interested in chemistry. He knew it, and did his best to help and encourage me in my studies.
There came an afternoon in the summer of 1966, when arriving at the Kent home, I ran upon a startling scene. The only other member of the household was a young fellow of twenty-five, named Franz Polter. He was a foreigner, born, I understood, in one of the Balkan Protectorates; he was here, employed by Dr. Kent as laboratory assistant.
He had been with the Kents, at this time, two years. Alan and Babs didn't like him, nor did I. He must have been a clever, skillful chemist. No doubt he was. But he was, to us, repulsive. A hunchback, with a short, thick body; dangling arms that suggested a gorilla; barrel chest; a lump set askew on his left shoulder, and his massive head planted down with almost no neck. His face was rugged in feature; a wide mouth, a high-bridged heavy nose; and above the face a great shock of wavy black hair. It was an intelligent face; in itself, not repulsive.
But I think we all three feared Franz Polter. There was always something sinister about him, that had nothing to do with his deformity.
When I came, that afternoon, Babs and Polter were under a tree on the Kent lawn. Babs, at fourteen, with long black braids down her back, bare-legged and short-skirted in a summer sport costume, was standing against the tree with Polter facing her. They were about the same height. To my youthful imaginative mind rose the fleeting picture of a young girl in a forest menaced by a gorilla.
I came upon them suddenly. I heard Polter say:
"But I lof you. And you are almos' a woman. Some day you lof me."
He put out his thick hand and gripped her shoulder. She tried to twist away. She was frightened, but she laughed.
"You--you're crazy!"
He was suddenly holding her in his arms, and she was fighting him. I dashed forward. Babs was always a spunky sort of girl. In spite of her fear now, she kept on struggling, and she shouted:
"You--let me go, you--you hunchback!"
He did let her go; but in a frenzy of rage he hauled back his hand and struck her in the face. I was upon him the next second. I had him down on the lawn, punching him; but though at seventeen I was a reasonably husky lad, the hunchback with his thick, hairy gorilla arms proved much stronger. He heaved me off. The commotion had brought Alan and without waiting to find out what the trouble was, he jumped on Polter. Between us, I think we would have beaten him pretty badly. But the housekeeper summoned Dr. Kent and the fight was over.
Polter left for good within an hour. He did not speak to any of us. But I saw him as he put his luggage into the taxi which Dr. Kent had summoned. I was standing silently nearby with Babs and Alan. The look he flung us as he drove away carried an unmistakable menace--the promise of vengeance. And I think now that in his warped and twisted mind he was telling himself that he would some day make Babs regret that she had repulsed his love.
What happened that night none of us ever knew. Dr. Kent worked late in his laboratory; he was there when Alan and Babs and the housekeeper went to bed. He had written a note to Alan; it was found on his desk in a corner of the laboratory next morning, addressed in care of the family lawyer to be given Alan in the event of his death. It said very little. Described a tiny fragment of gold quartz rock the size of a walnut which would be found under the giant microscope in the laboratory; and told Alan to give it to the American Scientific Society to be guarded and watched very carefully.
This note was found, but Dr. Kent had vanished! There had been a midnight marauder. The laboratory was on the lower floor of the house. Through one of its open windows, so the police said, an intruder had entered. There was evidence of a struggle, but it must have been short, because neither Babs, Alan, the housekeeper, nor any of the neighbors had heard anything. And the fragment of golden quartz was gone!
The police investigation came to nothing. Polter was found in New York. He withstood the police questions. There was nothing except suspicion upon which he could be held, and he was finally released. Immediately thereafter, he disappeared.
Neither Alan, Babs nor I saw Polter again. Dr. Kent had never been heard from to this day, four years later when I flew to join the twins in Quebec. And now Alan told me that Polter was up there! We had never ceased to believe that Dr. Kent was alive, and that Polter was the midnight marauder. As we grew older, we began to search for Polter. It seemed to us, that if we could once get our hands on him, we could drag from him the truth which the police had failed to get.
The call of a traffic director in mid-Vermont brought me back from these memories. My buzzer was clanging; a peremptory halting signal day-beam came darting up at me from below. It caught me and clung. I shouted down at it.
"What's the matter?" I gave my name and number and all the details in one breath. Above everything I had no wish to be halted now. "What's the matter? I haven't done anything wrong."
"The hell you haven't," the director roared. "Come down to three thousand. That lane's barred."
I dove obediently and his beam followed me. "Once more, like that, young fellow--" But he went busy with somebody else and I didn't hear the end of his threat.
I crossed into Maine in mid-afternoon. It was already twilight. The sky was solid lead and the landscape all up through here was gray-white with snow in the gathering darkness. I passed the City of Jackman, crossing full over it to take no chances of annoying the border officials; and a few miles further, I dropped to the glaring lights of International Inspection Field. The formalities were soon finished. I was ready to take-off when Alan rushed at me.
"George! I thought I could connect here." He gripped me. He was wild-eyed, incoherent. He waved his taxiplane away. "I'm going with you, George. I'm almost out of my mind. I can't--I don't know what's happened to her. She's gone, now--"
"Who's gone? Babs?"
"Yes." He pushed me into my plane and climbed in after me. "Don't talk. Get us up! I'll tell you then. I shouldn't have left."
When we were up in the air, I swung on him. "What are you talking about? Babs gone?"
I could feel myself shuddering with a nameless horror.
"I don't know what I'm talking about, George. I'm about crazy. The Quebec police think I am, anyway. I've been raising hell with them for an hour. Babs is gone! I can't find her. I don't know where she is."
He finally calmed down enough to tell me what happened. Shortly after his radiophone to me in New York, he had missed Babs. They had had lunch in the huge hotel and then walked on the Dufferin Terrace--the famous promenade outside looking down over the Lower City, the great sweep of the St. Lawrence River and the gray-white distant Laurentian mountains.
"I was to meet her inside. I went in ahead of her. But she didn't come. I went back to the Terrace but she was gone. She wasn't in our rooms. Nor the library, the lobby--anywhere."
But it was afternoon, in the public place of a civilized city. In the daylight of the Dufferin Terrace, beside the long ice toboggan slide, under the gaze of skaters on the ice-rink and several hundred holiday merrymakers, a young girl could hardly be murdered, or kidnapped, without attracting attention! The Quebec police thought the young American unduly excited about his sister, who was missing only an hour. They would do what they could, if by dark she had not rejoined him. They suggested that doubtless the young lady had gone shopping.
"Maybe she did," I agreed. But in my heart, I felt differently. "She'll be waiting for us in the Hotel when we get there, Alan."
"But I'm telling you we saw Polter this morning. He lives here--not thirty miles from Quebec. We saw him on the Terrace after breakfast. Recognized him immediately of course."
"Did he see you?"
"I don't know. He was lost in the crowd in a minute. But I asked a young French fellow if he knew him. He did know him, as Frank Rascor. That must be the name he wears now. He's a famous man up here--well known, immensely rich. I didn't know if he saw us or not. What a fool I was to leave Babs alone, even for a minute."
We were speeding over a white-clad valley with a little frozen river winding down its middle. Night had almost come. The leaden sky was low above us. It began snowing. The lights of the small villages along the river were barely visible.
"Can you land us, Alan?"
"Yes, surely. At the Municipal Field just beyond the Citadel. We can get to the Hotel in five minutes."
* * * * *
It was a flight of only half an hour. During it, Alan told me about Polter. The hunchback, known now as Frank Rascor, owned a mine in the Laurentians, some thirty miles from Quebec City--a fabulously productive mine of gold. It was an anomaly that gold should be produced in this region. No vein of gold-bearing rock had been found, except the one on Polter's property. Alan had seen a newspaper account of the strangeness of it; and on a hunch had come to Quebec, being intrigued by the description of the mine owner. He had seen Frank Rascor on the Dufferin Terrace, and recognized him as Polter.
Again my thoughts went back into the past. Had Polter stolen that missing fragment of golden quartz the size of a walnut which had been beneath Dr. Kent's microscope? We always thought so. Dr. Kent had some secret, some great problem upon which he was working. Polter, his assistant, had evidently known, or partially known, its details. And now, four years later, Polter was immensely rich, with a "gold mine" in mountains where there was no other evidence of gold!
I seemed to see some connection. Alan, I knew, was groping with a dim idea, so strange he hardly dared voice it.
"I tell you, it's weird, George. The sight of him. Polter--heavens, one couldn't mistake that build--and his face, his features, just the same as when we knew him."
"Then what's so weird?" I demanded.
"His age." There was a queer solemn hush in Alan's voice. "George, when we knew Polter, he was about twenty-five, wasn't he? Well, that was four years ago. But he isn't twenty-nine now. I swear it is the same man, but he isn't around thirty. Don't ask me what I'm talking about. I don't know. But he isn't thirty. He's nearer fifty! Unnatural! Weird! I felt it, and so did Babs, just that brief look we had of him."
I didn't answer. My attention was on managing the plane. The lights of Levis were under us. Beyond the City cliffs, the St. Lawrence lay in its deep valley; the Quebec lights, the light-dotted ramparts with the Terrace and the great fortresslike Hotel showed across the river.
"Better take the stick, Alan. I don't know where the field is. And don't you worry about Babs. She'll be back by now."
* * * * *
But she was not. We went to the two connecting rooms in the tower of the Hotel which Alan and Babs had engaged. We inquired with half a dozen phone calls. No one had seen or heard from her. The Quebec police were sending a man up to talk with Alan.
"Well, we won't be here," Alan called to me. He was standing by the window in Babs' room; he was trembling too much to use the phone. I hung up the receiver and went though the connecting door to join him.
Babs' room! It sent a pang through me. A few of her garments were lying around. A negligee was laid out on the large bed. A velvet boudoir doll--she had always loved them--stood on the dresser. Upon this Hotel room, in one day, she had impressed her personality. Her perfume was in the air. And now she was gone.
"We won't be here," Alan was repeating. He gripped me at the window. "Look." In his hand was an ugly-looking, smokeless, soundless automatic of the Essen type. "And I've got another one for you. Brought them with me."
His face was white and drawn, but his hands had steadied. The tremble was gone out of his voice.
"I'm going after him, George! Now! Understand that? Now? His place is only thirty miles from here, out there in the mountains. You can see it in the daylight--a wall around his property and a stone castle which he built in the middle of it. A gold mine? Hell!"
There was nothing to be seen now out of the window but the snow-filled darkness, the blurred lights of Lower Quebec and the line of dock lights five hundred feet below us.
"Will you fly me, George?"
"Of course."
I was the one trembling now; the cool feel of the automatic which Alan thrust into my hand seemed suddenly to crystallize Babs' peril. I was here in her room, with the scent of her perfume around me, and this deadly weapon was needed! But the trembling was gone in a moment.
"Yes, of course, Alan. No use talking to the police. I gave them all the information--a description of her, what you said she was wearing. No sense dragging Polter's name into it, with nothing tangible to go on. The police won't ransack the castle of a rich man just because you can't find your sister. Come on. You can tell me what this place is like as we go."
* * * * *
Bundled in our flying suits we hurried from the Hotel, climbed the Citadel slope and in ten minutes were in the air. The wind sucked at us. The snow now was falling with thick, huge flakes. Directed by Alan, I headed out over this ice-filled St. Lawrence, past the frozen Ile d'Orleans, toward Polter's mysterious mountain castle.
Suddenly Alan burst out, "I know what father's secret was! I can piece it together now, from little things that were meaningless when I was a kid. He invented the electro-microscope. You know that. The infinitely small fascinated him. I remember he once said that if we could see far enough down into smallness, we would come upon human life!"
Alan's low, tense voice was more vehement than I had ever heard it before. "It's clear to me now, George. That little fragment of golden quartz which he wanted me to be so careful of contained a world with human inhabitants! Father knew it, or suspected it. And I think the chemical problem on which he was working aimed for some drug. I know it was a drug they were compounding, Polter said so once, a radioactive drug; I remember listening at the door. A drug, George, capable of making a human being infinitely small!"
I did not answer when momentarily Alan paused. So strange a thing. My mind whirled with it; struggled to encompass it. And like the meaningless individual pieces of a puzzle, dropping so easily into place when the key piece is fitted, I saw Polter stealing that fragment of gold; abducting Dr. Kent--perhaps because Polter himself was not fully acquainted with the secret. And now, Polter up here with a fabulously rich "gold mine." And Babs, abducted by him, to be taken--where?
It set me shuddering.
"That's what it was," Alan reiterated. "And Polter, here now with what he calls a 'mine.' It isn't a mine, it's a laboratory! He's got father too, hidden God knows where! And now Babs. We've got to get them, George! The police can't help us! It's just you and me, to fight this thing. And it's diabolical!"
CHAPTER II
We soared over the divided channel of the St. Lawrence, between Orleans and the mainland. Montmorency Falls in a moment showed dimly white through the murk to our left, a great hanging veil of ice higher than Niagara. Further ahead, the lights of the little village of St. Anne de Beaupré were visible with the gray-black towering hills behind them.
"Swing left, George. Over the mainland. That's St. Anne. We pass this side of it. Put the mufflers on. This damn thing roars like a tower siren."
I cut in the muffler and switched off our wing-lights. It was illegal but we were past all thought of that. We were both desperate; the slow prudent process of acting within the law had nothing to do with this affair. We both knew it.
Our little plane was dark, and amid the sounds of this night blizzard our muffled engine couldn't be heard.
Alan touched me. "There are his lights; see them?"
We had passed St. Anne. The hills lay ahead--a wild mountainous country stretching northward to the foot of Hudson Bay. The blizzard was roaring out of the North and we were heading into it. I saw, on what seemed like a dome-shaped hill perhaps a thousand feet above the river level, a small cluster of lights which marked Polter's property.
"Fly over it once, George," Alan said. "Low--we can chance it. And find a place to land near the walls."
We presently had it under us. I held the plane at five hundred feet, and cut our speed to the minimum of twenty miles an hour facing the gale, though it was sixty or seventy when we turned. There were a score or two of hooded ground lights. But there was little reflection aloft, and in the murk of the snowfall I felt we could escape notice.
We crossed, turned and went back in an arc following Polter's curved outer wall. We had a good view of it. A weird enough looking place, here on its lonely hilltop. No wonder the wealthy "Frank Rascor" had attained local prominence!
The whole property was irregularly circular, perhaps a mile in diameter covering the almost flat dome of the hilltop. Around it, completely enclosing it, Polter had built a stone and brick wall. A miniature of the Great Wall in China! We could see that it was fully thirty feet high with what evidently were naked high-voltage wires protecting its top. There were half a dozen little gates, securely barred, with doubtless a guard at each of them.
Within the walls there were several buildings: a few small stone houses suggesting workmen's dwellings; an oblong stone structure with smoke funnels which looked like a smelter; a huge domelike spread of translucent glass over what might have been the top of a mineshaft. It looked more like the dome of an observatory--an inverted bowl fully a hundred feet wide and equally as high, set upon the ground. What did it cover?
And there was Polter's residence--a castlelike brick and stone building with a tower not unlike a miniature of the Chateau Frontenac. We saw a stone corridor on the ground connecting the lower floor of the castle with the dome, which lay about a hundred feet to one side.
Could we chance landing inside the wall? There was a dark, level expanse of snow where we could have done it, but our descending plane doubtless would have been discovered. But the mile-wide inner area was dark in many places. Spots of light were at the little wall-gates. There was a glow all along the top of the wall. Lights were on in Polter's house; they slanted out in yellow shafts to the nearby white ground. But for the rest, the whole place was dark, save a dim glow from under the dome.
I shook my head at Alan's suggestion that we land inside the walls. We had circled back and were a mile or so off toward the river. "The trees--and you saw guards down there. But that low stretch outside the gate on this side...."
A plan was coming to me. Heaven knows it was desperate enough, but we had no alternative. We would land and accost one of the gate guards. Force our way in. Once inside the wall, on foot in the darkness of this blizzard, we could hide; slip up to that dome. Beyond that my imagination could not go.
We landed in the snow a quarter of a mile from one of the gates. We left the plane and plunged into the darkness.
It was a steady upward slope. A packed snowfield was underfoot, firm enough to hold our weight, with a foot or so of loose, soft snow on its top. The falling flakes whirled around us. The darkness was solid. Our helmeted leather-furred flying suits were soon shapeless with a gathering white shroud. We carried our Essens in our gloved hands. The night was cold, around zero I imagine, though with that biting wind it felt far colder.
From the gloom a tiny spot of light loomed up.
"There it is, Alan. Easy now! Let me go first." The wind tore away my words. We could see the narrow rectangle of bars at the gate, with a glow of light behind them.
"Hide your gun, Alan." I gripped him. "Do you hear me?"
"Yes."
"Let me go first. I'll do the talking. When he opens the gate, let me handle him. You--if there are two of them--you take the other."
We emerged from the darkness, into the glow of light by the gate. I had the horrible feeling that a shot would greet us. A challenge came, at first in French and then in English.
"Stop! What do you want?"
"To see Mr. Rascor."
We were up to the bars now, shapeless hooded bundles of snow and frost. A man stood in the doorway of a lighted little cubby behind the bars. A black muzzle in his hand was leveled at us.
"He sees no one. Who are you?"
Alan was pressing at me from behind. I shoved him back, and took a step forward. I touched the bars.
"My name is Fred Davis. Newspaperman from Montreal I must see Mr. Rascor."
"You cannot. You may send in your call. The mouthpiece is there--out there to the left. Bare your face; he talks to no one without the face image."
The guard had drawn back into his cubby; there was only his extended hand and the muzzle of his weapon left visible.
I took a step forward. "I don't want to talk by phone. Won't you open the gate? It's cold out here. We have important business. We'll wait with you."
Abruptly the gate lattice slid aside. Beyond the cubby doorway was the open darkness within the wall. A scuffed path leading inward from the gate showed for a few feet.
I walked over the threshold, with Alan crowding me. The Essen in my coat pocket was leveled. But from the cubby doorway, I saw that the guard was gone! Then I saw him crouching behind a metal shield. His voice rang out.
"Stand!"
A light struck my face--a thin beam from a television sender beside me. It all happened in an instant, so quickly Alan and I had barely time to make a move. I realized my image was now doubtless being presented to Polter. He would recognize me!
I ducked my head, yelling, "Don't do that!"
It was too late! The guard had received a signal. I heard its buzz.
From the shield a tiny jet of fluid leapt at me. It struck my hood. There was a heavy sickening-sweet smell. It seemed like chloroform. I felt my senses going. The cubby room was turning dark, was roaring.
I think I fired at the shield. And Alan leapt aside. I heard the faint hiss of his Essen, and his choked, horrified voice:
"George, run! Don't fall!"
I crumpled; slid into blackness. And it seemed, as I went down, that Alan's inert body was falling on top of me....
* * * * *
I recovered after a nameless interval, a phantasmagoria of wild, drugged dreams. My senses came slowly. At first, there were dim muffled voices and the tread of footsteps. Then I knew that I was lying on the ground, and that I was indoors. It was warm. My overcoat was off. Then I realized that I was bound and gagged.
I opened my eyes. Alan was lying inert beside me, roped and with a black gag around his face and in his mouth. We were in a huge dim open space. Presently, as my vision cleared, I saw that the dome was overhead. This was a circular, hundred-foot-wide room. It was dimly lighted. The figures of men were moving about, their great misshapen shadows shifting with them. Twenty feet from me there was a pile of golden rock--chunks of gold the size of a man's fist, or his head, and larger, heaped loosely into a mound ten feet high.
Beyond this pile of ore, near the center of the room, twenty feet above the concrete floor, there was a large hanging electrolier. It cast a circular glow downward. Under it I saw a low platform raised a foot or two above the ground. A giant electro-microscope was hung with its twenty foot cylinder above the platform. Its intensification tubes were glowing in a dim phosphorescent row on a nearby bracket. A man sat in a chair on the platform at the microscope's eyepiece.
I saw all this with a brief glance, then my attention went to a white stone slab under the giant lense. It rested on the platform floor, a two-foot square surface of smooth white marble. A little roped railing a few inches high fenced it. And in its center lay a fragment of golden quartz the size of a walnut!
There was a movement across my line of vision. Two figures advanced. I recognized both of them. And I strained at my bonds; mouthed the gag with futile, frenzied effort. I could no more than writhe; and I couldn't make a sound. I lay, after a moment exhausted, and stared with horror.
The familiar hunched figure of Polter advanced toward the microscope. And with him, his huge hand holding her wrists, was Babs. They were nearly fifty feet from me, but with the light over them I could see them clearly. Babs' slim figure was clad in a long skirted dress--pale blue, now, with the light on it. Her long black hair had fallen disheveled to her shoulders. I couldn't see her face. She did not cry out. Polter was half dragging her as she resisted him; and then abruptly she ceased struggling.
I heard his guttural voice. "That iss better."
They mounted the platform. They were very small and seemed to be far away. I blinked. Horror surged over me. Their figures were dwindling as they stood there. Polter was saying something to the man at the microscope. Other men were nearby, watching. All were normal, save Polter and Babs. A moment passed. Polter was standing by the chair in which the man at the microscope was sitting. And Polter's head barely reached its seat! Babs was clinging to him now. Another moment and they were both tiny figures down by the chair-leg. Then they began walking with swaying steps toward the miniature railing of the white slab. The white reflection from the slab plainly illumined them. Polter's arm was around Babs. I had not realized how small they were until I saw Polter lift the rope of the little four-inch fence, and he and Babs stooped and walked under it. The fragment of quartz lay a foot from them in the center of the white surface. They walked unsteadily toward it. But soon they were running.
My horrified senses whirled. Then abruptly I felt something touch my face! Alan and I were lying in shadow. No one had noticed my writhing movements, and Alan was still in drugged unconsciousness. Something tiny and light and soundless as a butterfly wing brushed my face! I jerked my head aside. On the floor, within six inches of my eyes, I saw the tiny figure of a girl an inch high! She stood, with a warning gesture to her lips--a human girl in a filmy flowing robe. Long, pale golden tresses lay on her white shoulders; her face, small as my little fingernail, colorful as a miniature painted on ivory, was so close to my eyes that I could see her expression--warning me not to move.
There was a faint glow of light on the floor where she stood, but in a moment she moved out of it. Then I felt her brush against the back of my head. My ear was near the ground. A tiny warm hand touched my ear lobe; clung to it. A tiny voice sounded in my ear.
"Please do not move your head. You might kill me!"
There was a pause. I held myself rigid. Then the tiny voice came again.
"I am Glora, a friend. I have the drug! I will help you!"
CHAPTER III
It seemed that Alan was stirring. I felt the tiny hand leave my ear. I thought that I could hear faint little footfalls as the girl scampered away, fearful that a sudden movement by Alan would crush her. I turned cautiously after a moment and saw Alan's eyes upon me. He too had seen, with a blurred returning consciousness, the dwindling figures of Babs and Polter. I followed his gaze. The while slab with the golden quartz under the microscope seemed empty. The several men in this huge circular dome-room were dispersing to their affairs; three of them sat whispering by what I now saw was a pile of gold ingots stacked crosswise. But the fellow at the microscope held his place, his eyes glued to its aperture as he watched the vanishing figures of Polter and Babs on the rock-fragment.
Alan was trying to convey something to me. He could only gaze and jerk his head. I saw behind his head the figures of the tiny girl on the floor behind him. She wanted evidently to approach his head, but didn't dare. When for an instant he was quiet, she ran forward, but at once scampered back.
From the group by the ingots, one of the men rose and came toward us. Alan held still, watching. And the girl, Glora, seized the opportunity to come nearer. We both heard her tiny voice:
"Do not move! Close your eyes! Make him think you are still unconscious."
Then she was gone, like a mouse hiding in the shadows near us.
Amazement swept Alan's face; he twisted, mouthed at his gag. But he saw my eager nod and took his cue from me.
I closed my eyes and lay stiff, breathing slowly. Footsteps approached. A man bent over Alan and me.
"Are you no conscious yet?" It was the voice of a foreigner, with a queer, indescribable intonation. A foot prodded us. "Wake up!"
Then the footsteps retreated, and when I dared to look, the man was rejoining his fellows. It was a strange looking trio. They were heavy-set men in leather jackets and short, wide knee-length trousers. One wore tight, high boots, and the others a sort of white buckskin, with ankle straps. All were bare-headed--round, bullet heads of close-clipped black hair.
I suddenly had another startling realization. These men were not of normal size as I had assumed! They were eight or ten feet tall at the very least! And they and the pile of ingots, instead of being close to me, were more distant than I had thought.
Alan was trying to signal me. The tiny girl was again at his ear, whispering to him. And then she came to me.
"I have a knife. See?" She backed away. I caught the pinpoint gleam of what might have been a knife in her hand. "I will get a little larger. I am too small to cut your ropes. You lie still, even after I have cut them."
I nodded. The movement frightened her so that she leaped backward; but she came again, smiling. The three men were talking earnestly by the ingots. No one else was near us.
Glora's tiny voice was louder, so that we both could hear it at once.
"When I free you, do not move or they may see that you are loose. I get larger now--a little larger--and return."
She darted away and vanished. Alan and I lay listening to the voices of the three men. Two were talking in a strange tongue. One called to the man at the microscope, and he responded. The third man said suddenly:
"Say, talk English. You know damn well I can't understand that lingo."
"We say, McGuire, the two prisoners soon wake up."
"What we oughta do is kill 'em. Polter's a fool."
"The doctor say, wait for him return. Not long, what you call three, four hours."
"And have the Quebec police up here lookin' for 'em? An' that damn girl he stole off the Terrace. What did he call her, Barbara Kent?"
"These two who are drugged, their bodies can be thrown in a gully down behind St. Anne. That what the doctor plan to do, I think. Then the police find them--days maybe from now--and their smashed airship with them."
Gruesome suggestion!
The man at the microscope called, "They are almost gone I can hardly see them any more." He left the platform and joined the others. And I saw that he was much smaller than they--about my own size possibly.
There seemed six men here altogether. Four now, by the ingots, and two others far across the room where I saw the dark entrance of the corridor-tunnel which led to Polter's castle.
Again I felt a warning hand touch my face, and saw the figure of Glora standing by my head. She was larger now--about a foot tall. She moved past my eyes; stood by my mouth; bent down over my gag. I felt the cautious slide of a tiny knife-blade inserted under the fabric of the gag. She hacked, tugged at it, and in a moment ripped it through.
She stood panting from the effort. My heart was pounding with fear that she would be seen; but the man had turned the central light off when he left the microscope, and it was far darker here now than before.
I moistened my dry mouth. My tongue was thick, but I could talk.
"Thank you, Glora."
"Quiet!"
I felt her hacking at the ropes around my wrists. And then at my ankles. It took her a long time, but at last I was free! I rubbed my arms and legs; felt the returning circulation in them.
And presently Alan was free. "George, what--" he began.
"Wait," I whispered. "Easy! Let her tell us what to do."
We were unarmed. Two, against these six, three of whom were giants.
Glora whispered, "Do not move! I have the drugs. But I can not give them to you when I am still so small. I have not enough. I will hide--there." Her little arm gestured to where, near us, half a dozen boxes were piled. "When I am large as you, I come back. Be ready, quickly to act. I may be seen. I give you then the drug."
"But wait," Alan whispered. "Tell us--"
"The drug to make you large. Large enough to fight these men. I had planned to do that myself, until I saw you held captive. That girl of your world the doctor just now steal, she is friend of yours?"
"Yes! But--" A thousand questions were springing in my mind, but this was no time to ask them. I amended, "Go on! Hurry! Give us the drug when you can."
The little figure moved away from us and disappeared. Alan and I lay as we had before. But now we could whisper. We tried to anticipate what would happen; tried to plan, but that was futile. The thing was too strange, too astoundingly fantastic.
How long Glora was gone I don't know. I think, not over three or four minutes. She came from her hiding place, crouching this time, and joined us. She was, probably, of normal Earth size--a small, frail-looking girl something over five feet tall. We saw now that she was quite young, still in her teens. We lay staring at her, amazed at her beauty. Her small oval face was pale, with the flush of pink upon her cheeks--a face queerly, transcendingly beautiful. It was wholly human, yet somehow unearthly, as though unmarked by even the heritage of our Earthly strifes.
"Now! I am ready." She was fumbling at her robe. "I will give you each the same."
Her gestures were rapid. She flung a quick glance at the distant men. Alan and I were tense. We could easily be discovered now, but we had to chance it. We were sitting erect. Alan murmured:
"But what do we do? What happens? What--"
On the palm of her hand were two pink-white pellets. "Take these--one for each of you. Quickly!"
Involuntarily we drew back. The thing abruptly was gruesome, frightening. Horribly frightening.
"Quickly," she urged. "The drug is what you call highly radioactive. And volatile. Exposed to the air, it is gone very soon. You are afraid? No, I assure you it is not harmful."
With a muttered curse at his own reluctance, Alan seized the small pellet. I stopped him.
"Wait!"
The men momentarily were engaged in a low-voiced, earnest discussion. I dared to hesitate a moment longer.
"Glora, where will you be?"
"Here. Right here. I will hide."
"We want to go after Mr. Polter," I gestured. "Into the little piece of golden rock. That's where he went with the Earth girl, isn't it?"
"Yes. My world is there--within an atom there in that rock."
"Will you take us?"
"Yes! But later."
Alan whispered vehemently, "Why not now? We could get smaller, now."
But she shook her head. "That is not possible. We would be seen as we climbed the platform and crossed the white slab."
"No," I protested, "not if we get very small, hiding here first."
She was smiling, but urgently fearful of this delay. "Should we get that small, then it would be, from here"--she gestured toward the microscope--"to there, a journey of very many miles. Don't you understand?"
This thing so strange!
Alan was plucking at me. "Ready, George?"
"Yes."
I put the pellet on my tongue. It tasted slightly sweet, but seemed to melt quickly and I swallowed it hastily. My heart, was pounding, but that was apprehension, not the drug. A thrill of heat ran through my veins as though my blood were on fire.
Alan was clinging to me as we sat together. Glora again had vanished. In the background of my whirling consciousness the sudden thought hovered that she had tricked us; done to us something diabolical. But the thought was swept away in the confused flood of impressions upon me.
I turned dizzily. "You all right, Alan?"
"Yes, I--I guess so."
My ears were roaring, the room seemed whirling, but in a moment that passed. I felt a sudden growing sense of lightness. A humming was within me--a soundless tingle. The drug had gone to every tiny microscopic cell in my body. The myriad pores of my skin seemed thrilling with activity. I know now that it was the exuding volatile gas of this disintegrating drug. Like an aura it enveloped me, acted upon my garments.
I learned later much of the principles of this and its companion drug but I had no thought for such things now. The huge dimly illumined room under the dome was swaying. Then abruptly it steadied. The strange sensations within me were lessening, or I forgot them, and I became aware of externals.
The room was shrinking! As I stared, not with horror now, but with amazement and a coming triumph, I saw everywhere a slow, steady, crawling movement. The whole place was dwindling. The platform, the microscope, were nearer than before, and smaller. The pile of ingots, and men near there, were shifting toward me.
"George! My God--this is weird!"
I saw Alan's white face as I turned toward him. He was growing at the same rate as myself evidently, for in all the scene he only was unchanged.
We could feel the movement. The floor under us was shifting, crawling slowly. From all directions it contracted as though it was being squeezed beneath us. In reality our expanding bodies were pushing outward.
The pile of boxes which had been a few feet away, were thrusting themselves at me. I moved incautiously and knocked them over. They seemed small now, perhaps half their former size. Glora was standing behind them. I was sitting and she was standing, but across the litter our faces were level.
"Stand up!" she murmured. "You all right now. I hide!"
I struggled to my feet, drawing Alan up with me. Now! The time for action was upon us! We had already been discovered. The men were shouting, clambering to their feet. Alan and I stood swaying. The dome-room had contracted to half its former size. Near us was a little platform, chair and microscope. Small figures of men were rushing at us.
I shouted, "Alan! Watch yourself!"
We were unarmed. These men might have automatic weapons. But evidently they did not. Only knives were in their hands. The whole place was ringing with shouts. And then a shrill siren alarm from outside started clanging.
The first of the men--a few moments before he had seemed a giant--flung himself upon me. His head was lower than my shoulders. I met him with a blow of my fist in his face. He toppled backward; but from one side another figure came at me. A knife-blade bit into the flesh of my thigh.
The pain seemed to fire my brain. A madness descended upon me. It was the madness of abnormality. I saw Alan with two dwarfed figures clinging to him. But he threw them off, and they turned and ran.
The man at my thigh stabbed again, but I caught his wrist and, as though he were a child, whirled him around me and flung him away. He landed with a crash against the shrunken pile of gold nuggets and lay still.
The place was in a turmoil. Other men were appearing from outside. But they now stood well away from us. Alan backed against me. His laugh rang out, half hysterical with the madness upon him as it was upon me.
"God! George, look at them! So small!"
They were now hardly the height of our knees. This was now a small circular room, under a lowering concave dome. A shot came from the group of Pygmy figures. I saw the small stab of flame, heard the zing of the bullet.
We rushed, with the full frenzy of madness upon us--enraged giants. What actually happened I cannot recount. I recall scattering the little figures; seizing them; flinging them headlong. A bullet, tiny now, stung the calf of my leg. Little chairs and tables under my feet were crashing. Alan was lunging back and forth; stamping; flinging his tiny adversaries away.
There were twenty or thirty of the figures here now. I feared that they might produce more up-to-date weapons. But my fears were unfounded: soon I saw these figures making their escape.
The room was littered with wreckage. I saw that by some miracle of chance the microscope was still standing, and I had a moment of sanity.
"Alan! Watch out! The microscope--the platform! Don't smash them! And Glora be careful not to hurt her!"
I suddenly became aware that my head and my shoulders had struck the dome roof. Why, this was a tiny room! Alan and I found ourselves backed together, panting in the small confines of a circular cubby with an arching dome close over us. At our feet the platform with the microscope over it hardly reached our boot tops. There was a sudden silence, broken only by our heavy breathing. The tiny forms of humans strewn around us were all motionless. The others had fled.
Then we heard a small voice. "Here! Take this! Quickly! You are too large. Quickly!"
Alan took a step. And sudden panic was on us both. Glora was here at our feet. We did not dare turn; hardly dared to move. To change position might have crushed her now that she had left her hiding place. My leg hit the top of the microscope cylinder. It rocked but did not fall.
Where was Glora? In the gloom we could not see her. We were in a panic.
Alan began, "George, I--"
The contracting inner curve of the dome bumped gently against my head. Our panic and confusion turned into cold fear. The room was closing in to crush us.
I muttered, "Alan! I'm going out!" I braced myself and heaved against the side and top curve of the dome. Its metal ribs and heavy translucent, reinforced glass plates resisted me. There was an instant when Alan and I were desperately frightened. We were trapped, to be crushed in here by our own horrible growth. Then the dome yielded under our smashing blows. The ribs bent; the plates cracked.
We straightened, pushed upward and emerged through the broken dome, with head and shoulders towering into the outside darkness and the wind and snow of the blizzard howling around us.
CHAPTER IV
"Glora--that was horrible!"
We stood, again in normal size, with the wrecked dome-laboratory around us. The dome had a great jagged hole halfway up one of its sides, through which the snow was falling. The broken bodies strewn around were gruesome.
Alan repeated, "Horrible, Glora. The power of this drug is diabolical."
Glora had grown large after us and had given us the companion drug. I need not detail the strange sensations of our dwindling. We were so soon to experience them again!
We had searched, when still large, all of Polter's grounds. Some of his men undoubtedly escaped, made off into the blizzard. How many, we never knew. None of them ever made themselves known again.
We were ready to start into the atom. The fragment of golden quartz still lay under the microscope on the white square of stone slab. We had hurried with our last preparations. The room was chilling. We were all inadequately dressed for such cold.
I left a note scribbled on a square of paper by the microscope. With daylight Polter's wrecked place would be discovered and the police would surely come.
Guard this piece of golden quartz. Take it at once, very carefully, to the Royal Canadian Scientific Society. Have it watched day and night. We will return.
I signed it George Randolph. And as I did so, the extra ordinary aspect of these events swept me anew. Here in Polter's weird place I had been living in some strange fantastic realm. But this was the Province of Quebec, in civilized Canada. These were the Quebec authorities I was addressing.
I flung the thoughts away. "Ready, Glora?"
"Yes."
Then doubts assailed me. None of Polter's men had gotten large enough to fight us. Evidently he did not trust them with the drug. We could well believe that, for the thing misused, was diabolical beyond human conception. A single giant, a criminal, a madman, by the power of giant size alone, could menace and destroy beyond belief. The drug lost, or carelessly handled, could get loose. Animals, insects eating it, could roam the Earth, gigantic monsters. Vegetation nourished with the drug, might in a day overrun a big city, burying it with jungle growth!
How terrible a thing, if the realm of smallness were suddenly to emerge, consume this awe inspiring drug! Monsters of the sea, marine organisms, could expand until even the ocean was too small for them. Microbes of disease, feeding upon it--
Alan was prodding me. "We're ready, George."
"Okay, let's go."
This was not the largeness we were facing now, but smallness. I thought of Babs, down there with Polter, beyond the vanishing point in the realm of infinitely small. They had been gone an hour at least. Every moment lost now was adding to Babs' danger.
Glora sat with us on the platform. Strange little creature! She was wholly calm now; methodical with her last directions. There had been no time for her to tell us anything about herself. Alan had asked her why she had come here and how she had gotten the drugs. She waved him away.
"On the way down. Plenty of time then."
"How long will it take us?" Alan demanded.
"Not too long if we are careful with managing the trip. About ten hours."
And now we were ready to start. She told us calmly:
"I will give you each your share of the drugs, but then you take only as I tell you."
She produced from her robe several small vials a few inches long. They were tightly stoppered. The feel of them was cool and sleek; they seemed to be made of some strange, polished metal. Some of them were tinted black while the others glowed opalescent. She gave each of us one vial of each kind.
"The light ones are for diminishing," she said. "We take them very carefully, one small pellet only at first."
Alan was opening one of his, but she checked him.
"Wait! The drug evaporates very quickly. I have more to say. First we sit here together. Then you follow me to the white slab. We climb upon the little rock."
She laid her hands on my arms. Her blue eyes regarded us earnestly. Her manner was naive; childlike. But I could not mistake her intelligence or the force of character stamped on her face for all its dainty, ethereal beauty.
"Alan--" She smiled at him, and tossed back a straying lock of her hair which was annoying her. "You pay attention, Alan. You are very young, reckless. You listen. We must not be separated. You understand that, both of you? We will be always in that little piece of rock. But there will be miles of distance. And to be lost in size--"
What a strange journey upon which we were now starting! Lost in size?
"You understand me? Lost in size. If that happens, we might never find each other. And if we come upon the Doctor Polter and the girl he holds captive--if we can overtake them--"
"We must!" I exclaimed. "And we must get started."
She showed us which pellet to select. They were of several sizes, I found. And as she afterward told us, the larger ones were not only larger but of an intensified strength. We took the smallest. It was barely a thousandth part of the strength of the largest. In unison we placed the pellets on our tongues, and hastily swallowed.
The first sensations were as before. And, familiar now, they caused no more than a fleeting discomfort. But I think I could never get used to the outward strangeness!
The room in a moment was expanding. I could feel the platform floor crawling outward beneath me, so that I had to hitch and change my position as it pulled. We were seated together, Alan and I on each side of Glora. My fingers were on her arm. It did not change size, but it slowly drew away with a space opening between us. Overhead, the dome roof, the great jagged hole there, was receding, lifting, moving upward and away.
Glora pulled us to our feet. "We had better start now. The distance grows very far, so quickly."
We had been sitting within five feet of the stone slab with its four inch high railing around it. A chair was by the microscope eyepiece. As we stood swaying I saw that the chair was huge, and its seat level with my head. The great barrel-cylinder of the microscope slanted sixty feet upward. The dome roof was a distant spread three hundred feet up in the dimness. The dome-room was a vast arena now.
Alan and I must have hesitated, confused by the expanding scene--a slow, steady movement everywhere. Everything was drawing away from us. Even as we stood together, the creeping platform floor was separating us.
A moment passed. Glora was urging us on vehemently:
"Come! You must not stand there!"
We started walking. The railing around the slab was knee-high. The slab itself was a broad, square surface. The fragment of golden quartz lay in its center. It was now a jagged lump nearly a foot in diameter.
The platform seemed to shift as we walked; the railing hardly came closer as we advanced toward it. Then suddenly I realized that it was receding. Thirty feet away? No, now it was more than that--a great, thick rope, waist-high, with a huge spread of white surface behind it.
"Faster!" urged Glora. We ran, and reached the railing. It was higher than our heads. We ran under it, and cut out upon the white slab--a level surface, larger now than the whole dome-room had been.
Glora, like a fawn, ran in advance of us, her robe flying in the wind. She turned to look back.
"Faster! Faster, or it will be too hard a climb!"
Ahead lay a golden mound of rock. It was widening; raising its top steadily higher. Beyond it and over it was a vast dim distance. We reached the rock, breathless, winded. It was a jagged mound like a great fifty-foot butte. We plunged upon it and began climbing.
The ascent was steep; precipitous in places. There were little gullies, which expanded as we climbed up them. It seemed as if we would never reach the top, but at last we were there. I was aware that the drug had ceased its action. The yellow, rocky ground was no longer expanding.
We came to the summit and stood to get back our breath. Alan and I gazed with awe upon the top of a rocky hill. Little buttes and strewn boulders lay everywhere. It was all naked rock, ridged and pitted, and everywhere yellow-tinged.
Overhead was distance. I could not call it a sky. A blur was there--something almost but not quite distinguishable. Then I thought that I could make out a more solid blur which might be the lower lens of the microscope above us. And there were blurred, very distant spots of light, like huge suns masked by a haze, and I knew that they were the hooded lights of the laboratory room.
Before us, over the brink of a five hundred-foot drop, a great glistening plain stretched into the distance. I seemed to see where it ended in a murky blur. And far higher than our hilltop level a horizontal streak marked the rope railing of the slab.
"Well," said Alan. "We're here." He gazed behind us, back across the rocky summit which seemed several hundred feet across to its opposite brink. He was smiling, but the smile faded. "Now what, Glora? Another pellet?"
"No. Not yet. There is a place where we go down. It is marked in my mind."
I had a sudden ominous sense that we three were not alone up here. Glora led us back from the cliff. As we picked our way among the naked crags, it seemed behind each of them an enemy might be lurking.
"Glora, do you know if any of Dr. Polter's men might have the drug? I mean, do they come in and out of here?"
She shook her head. "I think not. He lets no one have the drug. He trusts not anyone. I stole it. I will tell you later. Much I have to tell you before we arrive."
Alan made a sudden, sidewise leap, and dashed around a rock. He came back to us, smiling ruefully.
"Gets on your nerves, all of this. I had the same idea you had, George. Might be someone around here. But I guess not." He took Glora's hand and they walked in advance of me. "We haven't thanked you yet, Glora," he added.
"Not needed. I came for help from your world. I followed the Dr. Polter when he came outward. He has made my world and my people, his slaves. I came for help. And because I have helped you, needs no thanks."
"But we do thank you, Glora." Alan turned his flushed, earnest face back to me. I thought I had never seen him so handsome, with his boyish, rugged features and shock of tousled brown hair. The grimness of adventure was upon him, but in his eyes there was something else. It was not for me to see it. That was for Glora; and I think that even then its presence and its meaning did not escape her.
We reached a little gully near the center of the hilltop. It was some twenty feet deep.
Glora paused. "We descend here."
The gully was an unmistakable landmark--open at one end, forty feet long, with the other end terminating in a blind wall which now loomed above us.
"A pit is here--a hole. I cannot tell just how large it will look when we are in this size."
We found it and stood over it--a foot-wide circular hole extending downward. Alan knelt and shoved his hand and arm into it, but Glora sprang at him.
"Don't do that!"
"Why not? How deep is it?"
She retorted sharply, "The Doctor Polter is ahead of us. How far away in size, who knows? Do you want to crush him, and crush that young girl with him?"
Alan's jaw dropped. "Good Lord!"
We stood with the little pit before us, and another of the pellets ready.
"Now!" said Glora.
Again we took the drug, a somewhat larger pellet this time. The familiar sensations began. Everywhere the rocks were creeping with a slow inexorable movement, the landscape expanding around us. The gully walls drew back and upward. In a moment they were cliff walls and we were in a broad valley.
We had been standing close together. We had not moved, except to shift our feet as the expanding ground drew them apart. I became aware that Alan and Glora were a distance from me. Glora called:
"Come, George! We're going down--quickly now."
We ran to the pit. It had expanded to a great round hole some six feet wide and equally as deep. Glora let herself down, peered anxiously beneath her, and dropped. Alan and I followed. We jammed the pit; but as we stood there, the walls were receding and lifting.
I had remarked Glora's downward glance, and shuddered. Suppose, in some slightly smaller size, Babs had been among these rocks!
The pit widened steadily. The movement was far swifter now. We stood presently in a great circular valley. It seemed fully a mile in diameter, with huge encircling walls like a crater rim towering thousands of feet into the air. We ran along the base of one expanding wall, following Glora.
I noticed now that overhead the turgid murk had turned into the blue of distance. A sky. It was faintly sky-blue, and seemed hazy, almost as though clouds were forming. It had been cold when we started. The exertion had kept us fairly comfortable; But now I realized that it was far warmer. This was different air, more humid, and I thought the smell of moist earth was in it. Rocks and boulders were strewn here on the floor of this giant valley, and I saw occasional pools of water. There had been rain recently!
The realization came with a shock of surprise. This was a new world! A faint, luminous twilight was around us. And then I noticed that the light was not altogether coming from overhead. It seemed inherent to the rocks themselves. They glowed, very faintly luminous, as though phosphorescent.
We were now well embarked upon this strange journey. We seldom spoke. Glora was intent upon guiding us. She was trying to make the best possible speed. I realized that it was a case of judgment, as well as physical haste. We had dropped into that six-foot pit. Had we waited a few moments longer, the depth would have been a hundred feet, two hundred, a thousand! It would have involved hours of arduous descent--if we had lingered until we were a trifle smaller!
We took other pellets. We traveled perhaps an hour more. There were many instances of Glora's skill. We squeezed into a gully and waited until it widened; we leapt over expanding caverns; we slid down a smooth yellowish slide of rocks, and saw it behind and over us, rising to become a great spreading ramp extending upward into the blue of the sky. Now, up there, little sailing white clouds were visible. And down where we stood it was deep twilight, queerly silvery with the dim light from the luminous rocks, as though some hidden moon were shining.
Strange, new world! I suddenly envisaged the full strangeness of it. Around me were spreading miles of barren, naked landscape. I gazed off to where, across the rugged plateau we were traversing, there was a range of hills. Behind and above them were mountains; serrated tiers; higher and more distant. An infinite spread of landscape! And, as we dwindled, still other vast reaches opened before us. I gazed overhead. Was it--compared to my stature now--a thousand miles, perhaps even a million miles up to where we had been two or three hours ago? I thought so.
Then suddenly I caught the other viewpoint. This was all only an inch of golden quartz--if one were large enough to see it that way!
Alan had been trying to memorize the main topographical features of our route. It was not as difficult as it seemed at first. We were always far larger than normal in comparison to our environment, and the main distinguishing characteristics of the landscape were obvious--the blind gully, with the round pit, for instance, or the ramp slide.
We had been traveling some three or four hours when Glora suggested a rest. We were at the edge of a broad canyon. The wall towered several hundred feet above us; but a few moments before, we had jumped down it with a single leap!
The last pellet we had taken had ceased its action. We sat down to rest. It was a wild, mountainous scene around us, deep with luminous gloom. We could barely see across the canyon to its distant cliff wall. The wall beside us had been smooth, but now it was broken and ridged. There were ravines in it, and dark holes resembling cave-mouths. One was near us. Alan gazed at it apprehensively.
"I say, Glora, I don't like sitting here."
I had been telling her all we knew of Polter. She listened quietly, seldom interrupting me. Then she said:
"I understand. I tell you now about Polter as I have seen him."
She talked for five or ten minutes. I listened, amazed, awed by what she said.
But Alan's insistence interrupted her. "Come on, let's get out of here. That tunnel-mouth, or cave, or whatever it is--"
"But we go in there," she protested. "A little tunnel. That is our way to travel. We are not far from my city now."
Perhaps Alan felt what once was called a hunch, a premonition, the presage of evil which I think comes strangely to us more often than we realize. Whatever it was, we had no time to act upon it. The tunnel-mouth which had caused Alan's apprehension was about a hundred feet away. It was a ten-foot, yawning hole in the cliff. Perhaps Alan sensed a movement in there. As I turned to look at it a great, hairy human arm came out of the opening! Then a shoulder! A head!
The giant figure of a man came squeezing through the hole on his hands and knees! He gathered himself, and as he stood erect, I saw that he was growing in size! Already he was twenty feet tall compared to us--a thick-set fellow, dressed in leather garments, his legs and arms heavily matted with black hair. He stood swaying, gazing around him. I stared up at his round bullet head, his villainous face.
He saw us! Stupid amazement struck him, then comprehension.
He let out a roar and came at us!
CHAPTER V
Glora shouted, "Into the tunnel! This way!" She held her wits and darted to one side, with Alan and me after her. We ran through a narrow passage between two fifty-foot boulders which lay close together. Momentarily the giant was out of sight, but we could hear his heavy tread and panting breath. We emerged having passed him. He was taller now. He seemed confused at our sudden scampering activity. He checked his forward rush, and ran around the twin boulders. But we had squeezed into a narrow ravine. He could not follow. He threw a rock. To us it was a boulder. It crashed behind us. To him, we were like scampering insects; he could not tell which way we were about to dart.
Alan panted, "Glora, does this lead out?"
The little ravine seemed to open fifty feet ahead of us. Alan stopped, seized a chunk of rock, flung it up. I saw the giant's face above us. He was kneeling to reach in. The rock hit him on the forehead--a pebble, but it stung him. His face rose away.
Again we emerged. The tunnel-mouth was near us. We reached it and flung ourselves into its ten-foot width just as the giant came lunging up. He was far larger than before. Looking back, I could see only the lower part of his legs blocked against the outer light.
"Glora! Alan, where are you?"
For a moment I did not see them. It was darker in this tunnel of broken rocky walls, and jagged arching roof than outside.
Then I heard Alan's voice: "George! Over here!"
They came running to me. For a moment we stood, undecided. My eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom. The tunnel was illumined by a dim phosphorescence from the rocks. I saw Alan fumbling for his vials, but Glora stopped him.
"No. We are the right size."
We were about a hundred feet back from the opening. The giant's legs disappeared. But in a moment the round, light hole of the exit was obscured again. His head and shoulders! He was lying prone. His great arms came in. He hitched forward. The width of his expanding shoulders wedged.
I think that he expected to reach us with a single snatch of his tremendous arms. Or perhaps he was confused, or forgot his growth. He did not reach us. His shoulders stuck. Then suddenly he was trying to back out, but could not!
It was only a moment. We stood in the radiant gloom of the tunnel, confused and frightened. The giant's voice roared, reverberating around us. Anger. A note of fear. Finally stark terror. He heaved, but the rocks of the opening held solid. Then there was a crack, a gruesome rattling, splintering--his shoulder bones breaking. His whole gigantic body gave a last convulsive lunge, and he emitted a deafening shrill scream of agony.
I was aware of the tunnel-mouth breaking upward. Falling rocks--an avalanche, a cataclysm around us. Then light overhead.
The giant's crushed body lay motionless. A pile of boulders, rocks and loose metallic earth was strewn upon his head and torso, illumined by the outer light through a jagged rent where the cliff-face had fallen down.
We were unhurt, crouching back from the avalanche. The giant's mangled body was still expanding; shoving at the litter of loose rocks. In a moment it would again be too small for the broken cliff opening.
I found my wits. "Alan, we've got to get out of here. God--don't you see what's happening?"
But Glora restrained us. She realized that the effect of the drug the giant had taken was about at its end. The growth presently stopped. That huge noisome mass of pulp which once had been human shoulders no longer expanded.
I shoved Glora away. "Don't look!" I was shaking; my head was reeling. Alan's face, painted by the phosphorescence, was ghastly.
Glora pulled at us. "This way! The tunnel is not too long. We go."
But the giant had drugs, and perhaps weapons. "Wait!" I urged. "You two wait here. I'll climb over him."
I told them why, and ran. I can only leave to the imagination that brief exploratory climb. The broken body seemed at least a hundred feet long; the mangled shoulders and chest filled the great torn hole in the cliff. I climbed over the litter. Indescribable, horrible scene! A river of warm blood was flowing down the declivity outward....
I came back to Glora and Alan. Under my arm was a huge cylinder vial. It was black, the enlarging drug. I set it down. They stared at me in my bloodstained garments.
"George! You're--"
"His blood, not mine." I tried to smile. "Here's the drug he carried. Evidently Polter was only sending him out because I found just the one drug."
"What'll we do with it?" Alan demanded. "Look at the size of it!"
"Destroy it," said Glora. "See, that is not difficult." She tugged at the huge stopper, and exposed a few of the pellets--to us as large as apples. "The air will soon spoil it."
We left it in the tunnel. I also had with me a great roll of paper which had been folded in the giant's belt, with the drug cylinder. We unrolled it, and hauled its folds to a spread some ten feet long. It was covered with a scrawled handwriting in pencil, but its giant characters seemed thick blurred strokes of charcoal. We could not read it; we were too close. Alan and Glora held it up against the tunnel wall. From a distance I could make it out. It was a note written in English, signed "Polter," evidently to one of his men.
It read:
The two prisoners, kill them at once. That is better. It will be too dangerous to wait for my return. Put their bodies with their airplane. Crash it a mile from my gate.
Full directions for our death followed. And Polter said he would return by dawn or soon after.
That gave me a start. By dawn! We had been traveling four or five hours. It was already dawn up there now!
"No," Glora explained, "the time in here is different. A different time-rate. I do not know how much difference. My world speeds faster; yours is very slow. It is not the dawn up there quite yet."
Again my mind strove to encompass these things--so strange. A faster time-rate prevailed in here? Then our lives were passing more quickly. We were living, experiencing things, compressed into a shorter interval. It was not apparent: there was nothing to which comparison could be made. I recalled Alan's description of Polter--not thirty years old as he should have been, but nearer fifty. I could understand that, now. A day in here was equal to only a few hours on our gigantic world outside.
We walked the length of the tunnel. I suppose it was a quarter of a mile, to us in this size. I wound through the cliff with a steady downward slope. And suddenly I realized that we had turned downward nearly half the diameter of a circle! We had turned over--or at least it seemed so. But the gravity was the same. I had noticed from the beginning very little change.
The realization of this tunnel brought a mental confusion. I lost all sense of direction. The outer world of Earth was under my feet, instead of overhead. Then we went level. I forgot the confusion: this was normality here. We turned upward a little. Cross tunnels intersected ours at intervals. I saw caverns, open, widened tunnels, as though this mountain were honeycombed.
"Look!" said Glora. "There is the way out. All these passages lead the same way."
There was a glow of light ahead. I recall that I was at that moment fumbling at my belt in two small compartments in which I was carrying the two vials of the drugs which Glora had given me. Alan wore the same sort of belt. We had found them in the wrecked dome-room. I heard a click on the ground at my feet. I was about to stoop to see what I had kicked--only a loose stone, perhaps--but Glora's words distracted me. I did not stoop. If only I had, how different events might have been!
The glow of light ahead of us widened as we approached, and presently we stood at the end of the tunnel. A spread of open distance was outside. We were on a ledge of a steep rocky wall some fifty feet above a wide level landscape. Vegetation! I saw trees--a forest off to the left. A range of naked hills lay behind it. A mile away, in front and to the right, a little town nestled on the shore of shining water. There was starlight on the water! And over it a vast blue-purple sky was studded with stars.
I gazed, with that first sudden shock of emotion, into the infinite depths of interplanetary space! Light years of distance. Gigantic worlds, blazing suns off there shrunken by distance now to little points of light. A universe was here!
But this was an inch of golden quartz!
Above my head were stars which, compared to my bodily size now, were vast worlds ten thousand light-years away! Yet, from the other viewpoint, I had only descended perhaps an eighth, or a quarter of an inch, beneath the broken pitted surface of a little fragment of golden quartz the size of a walnut--into just one of its myriads of golden atoms!
CHAPTER VI
"My world," Glora was saying. "You like it? See the starlight on the lake? I have heard that your world looks like this at night, in summer. Ours is always like this. No day, no night. Just like this--starlight." Her hand went to Alan's shoulder. "You like it? My world?"
"Yes, Glora. It's very beautiful."
There was a sheen on everything, a soft, glowing sheen of phosphorescence from the rocks rising to meet the pale wan starlight. The night air was soft, with a gentle breeze that rippled the distant lake into a great spread of gold and silver light.
The city was called Orena. I saw at once that we were about normal size in relation to its houses and people. There were fields beneath our ledge, with farm implements lying in them; no workers, for this was the time for sleep. Ribbons of roads wound over the country, pale streamers in the starlight.
Glora gestured, "The giants are on their island. Everyone sleeps now. You see the island off there?"
Beyond the city, over the low stone roofs of its flat-topped dwellings, the silver spread of lake showed a green-clad island some three miles off shore. The distance made its white stone houses seem small. But as I gazed, I realized that they were large compared to their environment, all far larger than those of the little town. The island was perhaps a mile in length. Between it and the mainland a boat was coming toward us. It was a dark blob of hull on the shining water, and above it a queerly shaped circular sail was puffed out, like a balloon parachute, by the wind.
"The giants live there?" said Alan. "You mean Polter's men?"
"And women. Yes."
"Are there many giants?"
"No."
"How many?" I put in. "How large are they? In relation to us now, I mean. And to your normal size?"
"You ask so many questions so fast, George. There are two hundred or more of the giants. And there are more than that many thousands of our people, here. Slaves, because the giants are four times as large. This little city, these fields, these hills of stone and metal, all this was ours to have in peace and happiness until your Polter came."
She gestured. "Everywhere is a great reach of desert and forest. There are insects, but no wild beasts--nothing to harm us. Nature is kind here. The weather is always like this. We were happy, until Polter came."
"And only a few thousand people," Alan said. "No other cities?"
"What lies off in the great distance, we do not know. Our nation is ten times what is here. We have a few other cities, and some of our people live in the forests."
She broke off. "That boat is coming for Polter. He is in the city no doubt of that. The boat will take him and that girl you call Babs, to the giant's island. His castle is there."
I turned to Alan. "They must have arrived only recently. Before we go any further we have to decide what size to be. We can't be gigantic because I'm sure he'd kill Babs if he sees us. We've got to plan!"
If we could get on that boat and go with him to the island--But in what size? Very small? But then, if we were very small it would take us hours to get from here to the boat. Glora pointed out where it would land--just beyond the village where the houses were set in a sparse fringe. It would be there, apparently, in ten or fifteen minutes. Polter probably was there now with Babs, waiting for it.
In our present size we could not get there in time. It was two or three miles at least. But a trifle larger--the size of one of Polter's giants--we would be able to make it. We would be seen, but in the pale starlight, keeping away from the city as much as possible, we might only be mistaken for Polter's people. And when we got closer we would diminish our size, creep into the boat, get near Babs and Polter and then plan what to do.
We climbed down from the ledge and stood at the base of the towering cliff which reared its jagged wall against the stars. A field and a road were near us. The road seemed of normal size. A man was in the field. He was apparently about my height. He presently discarded his work, walked away from us and vanished.
"Hurry, Glora." Alan and I stood beside her while she took pellets from her vials. We wanted our stature now to be four times what it was. Glora gave us pellets of both drugs, one of which was slightly more intense than the other.
"Polter made them this way," she said. "The two taken at once give just the growth to take us from this normal size to the stature of the giants."
Alan and I did not touch our own vials. We had used none of our enlarging drug upon the journey, and the supply she had given us of the other was almost gone.
As I took these pellets which Glora now gave us, standing there by the side of that road, I recall that I was struck with the realization that never once upon this journey had I conceived myself to be other than normal stature. I am normally about six feet tall. I still felt--there in that golden atom--the same height. This landscape seemed of normal size. There were trees nearby--spreading, fantastic-looking growths with great strings of pods hanging from them. But still--as I looked up to see one arching over me with its blue-brown leaves and an air-vine carrying vivid yellow blossoms--whatever the size of the tree, I could only conceive of myself as a normal man of six-foot stature standing beneath it. The human ego always supreme! Around each man's consciousness of himself the entire universe revolves.
We crouched on the ground when this growth now began; it would not do to be observed changing size. Polter's giants never did that. Years before, he had made them large--his few hundred men and women. They were, Glora said, people both of this realm and from our great world above--dissolute criminal characters who had now set themselves up here as the nucleus of a ruling race.
In a moment now, we were the size of these giants. Twenty to twenty-five feet tall, in relation to the environment. But I did not feel so. As I stood up--still feeling myself in normal stature--I saw around me a shrunken little landscape. The trees, as though in a Japanese garden, were about my own height; the road was a smooth, level path; the little field near us had a toy fence around it. On another road nearby a man was walking. In height he would barely have reached my knees. He saw us rise beside the trees. He darted off in alarm, and disappeared.
I have taken longer to tell all this than the actual time which passed. We could see the boat coming from the island, and it was still a fair distance off shore. We ran along the road, skirting the edge of the little town. None of its houses were taller than ourselves. The windows and doorways were ovals into which we could only have inserted a head or an arm. Most of them were dark. Little people occasionally stared out, saw us run past, and ducked back, thankful that we did not stop to harass them.
"This way," said Glora. She ran like a faun, hardly winded, with Alan and me heavily panting behind her. "There are trees--thick trees--quite near where the boat lands. We can get in them and hide and change our size to smallness. But hurry, for we shall need a great deal of time when we are small!"
The little spread of town and the shining lake remained always to our right. In five minutes we were past most of the houses. A patch of woods, with thick, interlacing treetops about our own height, lay ahead. It extended a few hundred feet over to the lake shore. The sailboat was heading in close. There was a broad starlit roadway at the edge of the lake, and a dock at which the boat was preparing to land.
Would we be in time? I suddenly feared not. To get small now, with distance lengthening between us and the boat, would be disastrous. And where was Polter?
Abruptly we saw him. There had been only little people visible to us: none of our own height. The lake roadway by the dock was brightly starlit. As we approached the intervening patch of woods it seemed that a crowd of little people were near the dock. Polter must have been sitting. But now he rose up. We could not mistake his thick hunched figure, the lump on his shoulders clear in the starlight with the gleaming lake as a background. The crowd of little figures were milling around his knees. In the silence of the night the murmur of their voices floated over to us.
"There he is!" Alan gasped. We all three checked our running; we were at the edge of the patch of woods. "By God, there he is! Let's get larger and rush him! He's only a few hundred feet away!"
But Babs? Where was Babs?
"Alan, get down!" I crouched, pulling Alan and Glora with me. "Don't let him see us! We can't rush him Alan, 'til we find Babs. He'd see us coming and kill her."
Of all the strange events that had been flung at us, I think this sudden crisis now most confused Alan and me.... To get larger, or smaller? Which? Yet something had to be done at once.
Glora said, "We can get through the woods best in this size. We won't be seen and will be closer to the landing."
We crouched so that the treetops were always well over us. The patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were about shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of the crowd grew louder.
Presently we were crouching at the other edge of the woods. I softly shoved the tree branches aside until we could all three get a clear view of the strange scene now directly before us.
And I saw a toy dock, at which a twenty-foot, bargelike open sailboat was landing; a narrow starlit roadway, crowded with a milling throng of people all no more than a foot and a half in height. The crowd milled almost to where we were crouching, unseen in the shrubbery.
Across the road by the dock, Polter stood with the crowd down around his knees. In height he seemed the old familiar Polter. Bareheaded, with his shaggy black hair shot with white. He was dressed in Earth fashion: narrow black evening trousers and a white shirt and collar with flowing black tie. I saw at once what Alan had noticed--the change in him. An abnormality of age. I would have called him now forty, or older. Beyond even that there was an abnormality. A man old before his time; or younger than he should have been for the years he had lived. An indescribable mingling of something of the two worlds, perhaps. It marked him with a look at once unnatural and sinister.
These were instant impressions. Glora was plucking at me. "On the white chest of his shirt, something is there."
Polter was coatless, with snowy white shirt and cuffs to his thick wrists. He was no more than fifty feet from us. On his shirt bosom something golden in color was hanging like a large bauble, an ornament, an insignia. It was strapped tightly there with a band about his chest, a cord, like a necklace chain, up to his thick hunched neck, and other chains down to his belt.
I stared at it. An ornament, like a cube held flat against his shirt front--a little golden cube, ornate with tiny bars.
I heard Alan murmuring, "A cage! Why George, it's--"
And then, simultaneously, realization struck me. It was a golden cage strapped there. And I seemed to see that there was something in it. A tiny figure? Babs!
"I think he has her there," Glora murmured. "You see the little box with bars? The girl, Babs, is a prisoner in there." She spoke swiftly, vehemently. "He will take the boat to the island."
She gripped us. "You think it really best to go? I do what you say. I had the wish to get to my father with these drugs."
"No!" exclaimed Alan. "We must keep close to Polter!"
We were ready with our pellets. But a sudden activity in the road made us pause. The crowd of little people were hostile to Polter. A sullen hostility. They milled about him as he stood there, gazing down at them sardonically.
And abruptly he shouted at them in English. "You speak my language, some of you. Then listen!"
The crowd fell silent.
"Listen. This iss your future Queen. Can you see her? She iss small now. But she has the magic power. Soon she will be large, like me."
The crowd was shouting again. It surged forward, but it lacked a leader, and those in advance shoved backward in fear.
Polter spoke again. "This girl from my world, you will like her. She iss kind and very beautiful. When she iss large, you will see how beautiful."
A small stone suddenly came up from the throng of little people and struck Polter on the shoulder. Then another. The crowd, emboldened, made a rush: surged against his legs.
He shouted, "You do that? Why, how dare you? I show you what giants do when you make dem angry!"
From down by his knees he plucked the small figure of a man. The crowd scattered with shouts of terror. Polter had the struggling eighteen-inch figure by the wrist. He whirled it around his head like a ninepin and flung it over the canopy of the dock far out into the shimmering lake!
CHAPTER VII
The trees around us expanded to towering forest giants. The underbrush rose up over our heads. We had taken a taste of the diminishing drug. Glora showed us how to touch it to our tongue several times, to adjust our size as we became smaller. It took us no more than a minute to diminish. We could hear the roar of the crowd, and Polter's voice shouting. We ran forward through the great forest. It was a fair distance out to the starlit road. We saw it as a wide shining esplanade. The people now were giants twice our height! Polter, himself towering with a seeming fifty-foot stature, was standing by the gigantic canopy of the dock. He had dispersed the crowd. There was an open space on the esplanade--a run for us of about a hundred feet.
"We've got to chance it," I murmured. "Make a run for it--now."
We darted across. In the confusion, with all eyes centered on Polter, we escaped discovery. It was dim under the dock canopy. Polter had backed from the road and was walking to the barge. It lay like the length of an ocean liner, its sail looming an enormous spread above it. The gunwale was level with the dock. A dozen or more fifty-foot men were greeting Polter. They were amidships.
I realize now that in those moments as we scurried aboard like wharf rats, we took wild chances. We made for the stern which momentarily was unoccupied. To Polter and his men we were eight or nine inches tall. We dropped over the gunwale, slid down the thirty or forty-foot incline of the interior and landed on the bottom of the boat.
There were many places where we could safely hide. A litter of gigantic rope-strands was around us. We could see the bottom of a crossbench looming over head, and the great curving sides of the vessel with the gunwales outlined against the starlight.
The boat left the dock in a moment; the sail bellied out, enormous over us. Ten feet forward from us the towering figure of a man sat on a bench with the steering mechanism before him. Further on, the other men were dispersed, with one or two in the distant bow. Polter reclined on a cushioned couch amidships. Looking along the dark widely level bottom of the boat there were only the feet and legs of men visible.
Alan whispered, "Let's get closer."
We were insects soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here--the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the voices of the men.
We passed the boots of the seated helmsmen, and found another hiding place nearer Polter. We could see his giant length plainly. None of the other men were near him. He was reclining on an elbow, stretched at ease on a cushion. And at the moment, he was fumbling with the chains that fastened the little golden cage to his chest. The cage was double its former size to us now. A shaft of pale light came down, reflected from the great sail surface overhead. It struck the bars of the cage. We could see a small figure in there.
Then we heard Polter's voice. "I will let you out, Babs. You come out, sit on my hand and talk with me. That will be nice? We haf a little time."
He unfastened the cage and put it on the cushion beside him. He was still propped up on one elbow.
"I let you out, now. Be careful, Babs."
My heart was almost smothering me. "Alan! We've got to get still closer! Try something! Get large, shall we?"
Alan whispered tensely, "I don't know! I don't know what to do."
"We can get closer," Glora whispered. "But never larger--not here. They would discover us too soon."
We crept forward. We reached the edge of the cushion. Its top surface was a trifle lower than our heads--a billowing, wrinkled mass of fabric. But I saw that the folds of it were rough enough to afford a footing. I thought that I could climb it. We stood erect. There was a deep shadow along here, but it was brighter on the cushion top. We could see over its edge; an undulating spread of surface with the giant length of Polter stretched over it. The cage was near us. Polter's great fingers fumbled with it; a door in the lattice bars flipped open.
"Careful, my Babs!" His voice was a throaty, rumbling roar above us. "Careful! I do not want you to be hurt."
From the little doorway came the figure of Babs! The starlight glowed on her blue dress; her black hair was tumbling over her shoulders; her face was pale but she was unharmed.
I think that I had never loved her so much as at that moment. Nor ever seen her so beautiful as in miniature, standing at the door of her golden cage, bravely facing the monstrous misshapen figure of her captor.
We heard her small voice.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Stand quiet. Now I put my hand for you."
His monstrous hand bristled with a thatch of heavy black hair. He slid it carefully along the cushion. Babs was barely the length of one of its finger joints. She climbed upon its palm.
"That iss right, Babs. Now I bring you--hold tight to my finger. Here, I crook the little one. Fling your arms around it."
With a swoop his hand took her aloft and away. Then we saw her, twenty feet or so in the air, still on his hand as he held it near his face.
"Now we haf a little talk, Babs. When we get to the island, I put you back in your cage."
I had a sudden flash of realization. There was something I could do. I know now my judgment was bad. I recall it struck me that Alan would want to do it also. And, perhaps, even Glora. But that wouldn't work. My chances, however desperate, were better alone. Glora and Alan--in our present size--could doubtless disembark safely. Glora knew the layout of the island. And she could follow Polter.
Alan and Glora were standing beside me peering over that billowing cushion spread toward the distant giant palm with Babs standing upon it. I gripped Alan's shoulder.
"See here, Alan," I whispered vehemently: "What ever happens, we must follow Polter. Glora knows the way. Some opportunity will come to get large without being discovered. Then we'll rush Polter!"
Alan's white face turned to me. "Yes, that's what we're planning. But George, here on this boat--"
"Of course not. Can't do it here. Tell Glora, to be sure to follow Polter. Whatever happens, you'll think of nothing else: you won't will you?"
"George, what--"
"We've got to make some opportunity." I was trembling inside, fearful that Alan would be suspicious of me. Yet I had to make sure that he and Glora would stay as close to Polter as possible.
"All right," Alan agreed. "Listen to them."
Polter was talking to Babs. But I didn't hear the words I moved a trifle away. Rash decision! I hardly decided anything. There was only the vision of Babs before me and my love for her. My desperate need of doing something; getting to her, seeing her, being with her. I wanted her near my own size again as though the blessed normality of that would rationalize and lessen her danger. If only I had been less rash! If only back there in that tunnel I had stopped to see what it was my foot kicked against!
I slid away. Alan and Glora did not notice it; they were whispering together and gazing over the cushion at Babs. In the shadow of the cushion I moved some ten feet. On the undulating top of the cushion the little golden cage stood with its lattice door open. It was a few feet from my face.
I fumbled at my belt for the diminishing vial. I found one pellet left. Well, that would be enough. I was hurried. Alan might discover me. Polter might put Babs back in the cage and close its door. We might be near the island already, and the confusion, the activity of disembarking would defeat me. A thousand things might happen.
I touched the pellet to my tongue. In a few seconds the drug action had come and passed. The cushion top loomed well over my head. The side was a ridged, indescribably unnatural vista of cliff wall. The fabric was coarse with hairy strands, dented into little ravines and crevices. I climbed and I came panting to the pillow surface. The golden cage was six or eight feet away and was now two feet high.
Again I touched the drug to my tongue; held it an instant. The cage drew away; grew to a normal six-foot height; then larger, until in a moment it stopped. I stood peering at it, trying to gauge its size in relation to me. I wanted so intensely now to appear normal in Babs' eyes. The cage seemed about ten feet high. A little less, possibly. I barely tasted the pellet, and replaced it carefully in the vial. I could only hope its efficacy would be preserved.
I had to chance that I wouldn't be seen while crossing this billowy expanse. I ran. The rope strands of the fabric now had spaces between their curving surfaces. The cage was a shining golden house, set on this wide rolling area. Far in the distance there was a blur--Polter's reclining body.
I reached the cage. It was a room about ten feet square and equally as high. Walled solid, top and bottom, and on three sides. The front was a lattice of bars, with a narrow six-foot doorway, standing open now.
I dashed in. The interior was not wholly bare. There was a metal-wrought couch fastened to the wall, with a railing around it and handles. It suggested a ship's bunk. There was a railing at convenient height all around the wall.
I sought a hiding place. I saw just one--under the couch. It was secluded enough. There was a grillelike lattice extending down from the seat to the floor. I squeezed under one end, and lay wedged behind the grille.
How much time passed I don't know. My thoughts were racing. Babs would be coming.
I heard the distant approaching rumble of Polter's voice. Through the grille I could see across the floor of the ten foot cage to the front lattice bars. Outside, there appeared a huge, pink-white, mottled blob--Polter's hand, a ridged and pitted surface with great, bristling black stalks of hair.
The figure of Babs came through the cage doorway. Blessed normality! The same slim little Babs who always stood, since we were both matured, with her head about level with my shoulders.
The latticed door swung shut with a reverberating metallic clank. Babs stood tense, clinging to the wall railing. I heard the blurred rumble of Polter's voice.
"Hold tightly, my little Babs!"
The room lurched; went upward and sidewise with a wild dizzying swoop. Babs clung to the rail and I was wedged prone under the couch. Then the movement stopped; there was a jolting, rocking, and outside I heard the clank of metal. Polter was fastening the chains of the cage to his chest.
A white glow now came through the bars. It was starlight reflecting from Polter's shirt bosom. An abyss of distance was outside. I could see nothing but the white glow.
Momentarily there was very little movement in the room. Only the rhythmic sway of Polter's breathing and an occasional jolt as he shifted his position. The floor was tilted at a sharp angle. Babs came toward the couch, pulling herself along the wall railing.
I called softly, "Babs!"
She stopped. I called again, "Babs! Don't cry out! It's George! Here--stand still!"
She gave a little cry. "George--where are you? I don't--"
I slid out from my concealment and stood up, holding to the railing.
Blessed normality of size! She cried again, "George! You! How did you get here?"
She edged along the railing, a step or two down the tilting floor, then released her hold and flung herself into my waiting arms.
"I think we are landing. Hold on to the railing, George. When the room moves it goes with a rush."
Babs laughed softly. It must have seemed to her, after being alone in here, that now our plight was far less desperate. She had told me how she was captured. A man accosted her on the Terrace, saying he wanted to speak to her about Alan. Then a weapon threatened her. Amid all those people she was held up in old-fashioned style, hurried to a taxicar and whirled away.
She was saying now, "When Polter moves, it is dizzying. You'll see."
"I have already, Babs. Heavens, what a swoop!"
The room was more level now. We carefully drew ourselves to the front lattice. Polter was standing, and we had the white sheen from his shirt front. A sheer drop was outside the bars, but looking down I could see the outlines of his body with the huge spread of the boat's cockpit underneath us.
A confusion of rumbling voices sounded. Blurred giant shapes were outside. The room jolted and swayed as the boat landed and Polter disembarked.
Babs stood clinging to me. We, at least, were normal in this metal barred room, Babs and I. But outside was the abnormality of largeness. I think that in relation to us, the men were of over two hundred-foot stature, and the hunched Polter a trifle less. It seemed as he walked that we were lurching at least a hundred and fifty feet above ground.
"You had better hide," Babs urged. "He might stop and speak to someone. If anyone looked in here you would be seen; no chance then, even to get across the room."
It was true. But for a few moments I lingered. I could distinguish vegetation on their flat roof-tops, as though flower gardens were laid there.
We passed a house with its hundred-foot oval windows all aglow with light. Music floated out--a distant blare of sounds, and the ribald laughter of giant voices. I had seen no women among these giants of the island. But now a huge face was at one of the ovals. A dissolute, painted woman of Earth, staring out at Polter as he passed. It was like the enormous close-up image on a large motion picture screen. She shouted ribald jest as he went by.
"George, please go back. Suppose she had seen you?"
We were ascending a hill. A distance ahead a great oblong building loomed like a giant's palace, which indeed it was. We headed for it, passed through a vast arching doorway into the greater dimness of an echoing interior. I scurried back across the lurching room and again wedged myself under the couch. Babs stood at the lattice ten feet away. We dared to talk in low tones; the rumbling voices and footsteps outside would make our tiny voices inaudible to Polter.
I was tense with my plans. I had told them to Babs. With the one remaining partially used pellet of the diminishing drug we could make ourselves small enough to walk out through the bars. Then my black vial of the enlarging drug, as yet unused, would take us up, out to our own world. We could not use the drugs now. But the chance might come when Polter would set the cage on the ground, or somewhere so that we might climb down from it, with a chance to hide and get large before we were discovered. I would fight our way upward; all I needed was a fair start in size.
But I lay now with doubts assailing me. This was the first moment I had had for calm thoughts, though in truth they were far from calm! Were Alan and Glora following us now? I could only hope so. Once out of this, Babs and I would have to rejoin them. But how? Panic swept me. I shouldn't have left them. Or at least I should have told them what I was trying to do, and given Alan a chance to plan.
The panic grew, the premonition of disaster. From my belt I took the opalescent vial with its one partially used pellet. I dumped the pellet out. It was spoiling! The exposure to the air and the moisture of my tongue, had ruined it! I realized the catastrophe, as I held its crumbling, deliquescing fragments on my palm it melted into vapor and was gone!
We couldn't make ourselves smaller! Now we'd have to wait until Polter opened the cage. But once outside, the enlarging drug would give us our chance to fight our way upward. My trembling fingers sought the black vial in my belt. It wasn't there! My mind flung back: in that tunnel, something had dropped and I had kicked it! Accursed chance! My accursed, heedless stupidity!
I had lost the black vial! We were helpless! Caged! Marooned here in a size microscopic!
CHAPTER VIII
I lay concealed and Babs stood at the lattice of our cage room. I was aware that Polter had entered some vast apartment of this giant palace. The light outside was brighter; I heard voices--Polter's and another man's. I could see the distant monster shape of one. He was at first so far away that all his outline was visible. A seated man in a huge white room. I thought there were great shelves with enormous bottles. The spread of table tops passed under our cage as Polter walked by them. They held a litter of apparatus, and there was the smell of chemicals in the air. This seemed to be a laboratory.
The man stood up to greet Polter. I had a glimpse of his head and shoulders. He wore a white linen coat, open, soft collar and black tie. He seemed an old man, queerly old, with snow-white hair.
I had an instant of whirling impressions. Something was familiar about his face. It was wrinkled and seamed with lines of age and care. There were gentle blue eyes.
Then all I could see was the vast spread of his white shirt and coat, a black splotch of his tie outside our bars as Polter faced him.
Babs gave a low cry. "Why--why--dear God--"
And then I knew! And Polter's words were not needed, though I heard their rumble.
"I am back again, Kent. Are you still rebellious? You haf still determined to compound no more of our drugs? You would rather I killed you? Then see what I haf here. This little cage, someone--"
It was Dr. Kent whom he addressed. He must have been here all these years!
Babs turned her white face toward me. "George, it's father! He's alive!"
"Quiet, Babs! Don't let him know I'm here. Remember!"
The old man recognized her. "Babs!" It was an agonized cry. The blur of him was gone as he sank down into his chair.
Polter continued standing, I could envisage his sardonic grin.
From over us came Polter's rumble. "She iss glad to see you, Kent. I haf her here, safe. You always knew I would nefer be satisfied until I had my little Babs? Well, now I haf her. Can you hear me?"
A sudden desperate calmness fell on Babs. She called evenly. "Yes, I hear you. Father, don't anger him. Do what he says. Dr. Polter, will you let me be with my father? After all these years, let me be with him, just for a little while. In his size--normal."
"Hah! My Babs iss scheming."
"No, I want to talk to him, after all these years when I thought he was dead."
"Scheming? You think, my little Babs, that he has the drugs? I am not so much a fool. He makes them. He can do that. And that last secret reaction, only he can perform. He iss stubborn. Never would he tell me that one reaction. But he makes no drugs complete, only when I am here."
"No, Dr. Polter! I want only to be with him."
The old man's broken voice floated up to us. "You won't harm her, Polter?"
"No. Fear nothing. But you no longer rebel?"
"I'll do what you tell me." The tones carried hopeless resignation, years of being beaten down, rebelling--but now this last blow vanquished him. Then he spoke again, with a sudden strange fire.
"Even for the life of my daughter, I will not make your drugs, Polter, if you mean to harm our Earth."
The golden cage room swooped as Polter sat down. "Hah! Now we bargain. What do you care what I do to your world? You never will see it again. I can lie to you. My plans--"
"I do care."
"Well, I will tell you, Kent. I am good-natured now. Why should I not be with my dear little Babs? I tell you, I am done with the Earth world. It iss much nicer here. My friends, they haf a good time always. We like this little atom realm. I am going out once more. I must hide the little piece of golden quartz so no harm will come to it."
Polter was evidently in a high good humor. His voice fell to an intimate tone of comradeship; but still I could not mistake the irony in it.
"You listen to me, Kent. There was a time, years ago, when we were good friends. You liked your young assistant, the hunchback Polter. Iss it not so? Then why should we quarrel now? I am gifing up the Earth world. I wanted of it only the little Babs.... You look at me so strange! You do not speak."
"There is nothing to say," retorted Dr. Kent wearily.
"Then you listen. I haf much gold above in Quebec. You know that. So very simple to take it out of our atom, grow large with it to what we call up there the size of a hundred feet. I haf a place, a room, secluded from prying eyes under a dome roof. I become very tall, holding a piece of gold. It is large when I am a hundred feet tall. So I haf collected much gold. They think I own a mine. I haf a smelter and my gold quartz I make into ingots, refined to the standard purity. So simple, and I am a rich man.
"But gold does not bring happiness, my friend Kent." He chuckled ironically at his use of the platitude. "There iss more in life than the ownership of gold. You ask my plans. I haf Babs, now. I am gifing up the Earth world. The mysterious man they know as Frank Rascor will vanish. I will hide our little fragment of quartz. No one up there will even try to find it. Then I come down here, with Babs, and we will haf so nice a little government and rule this world. No more of the drugs then will be needed, Kent. When you die, let the secret die with you."
Again Polter's voice became ingratiating, even more so than before. "We will be friends, Kent. Our little Babs will lof me; why should she not? You will tell her--advise her--and we will all three be very happy."
Dr. Kent said abruptly, "Then leave her with me now. That was her request, a moment ago. If you expect to treat her kindly, then why not--"
"I do! I do! But not now. I cannot spare her now. I am very busy, but I must take her with me."
Babs had been silent, clinging to the bars of our cage. She called; "Why? I ask you to put this cage down."
"Not now, little bird."
"Let me be with my father."
It struck a pang through me. Babs was scheming but not the way Polter thought. She wanted the cage put on the floor, herself out, and a chance for me to escape. I had not yet told her of my miserable stupidity in losing the vial.
Polter was repeating, "No, little bird. Presently; not now. I will take you with me on my last trip out. I want to talk with you in normal size when I haf time."
Our room swooped as he stood up. "You think over what I haf said, Kent. You get ready now to make the fresh drugs I will need to bring down all my men from the outer world. They will all be glad to come, or, if not--well, we can easily kill those who refuse. You make the drugs. I need plenty. Will you?"
"Yes."
"That iss good. I come back soon and gif you the catalyst for that last reaction. Will you be ready?"
"Yes."
The blur outside our bars swung with a dizzying whirl as Polter turned and left the room, locking its door after him with a reverberating clank.
* * * * *
Left alone in his laboratory, Dr. Kent began his preparations for making a fresh supply of the drugs. This room, with two smaller ones adjoining, was at once his workshop and his prison. He stood at his shelves, selecting the basic chemicals. He could not complete the final compounds. The catalyst which was necessary for the final reaction would be brought to him by Polter.
How long he worked there with his thoughts in a whirl at seeing Babs, he did not know. His movements were automatic; he had done all this so many times before. His mind was confused, and he was trembling from head to foot--an old, queerly, unnaturally old man now--unnerved. His fingers could hardly hold the test tubes.
His thoughts were flying. Babs was here, come down from the world above. It was disaster--the thing he had feared all these years.
He suddenly heard a voice.
"Father!"
And again: "Father!" A tiny voice, down by his shoe tops. Two small figures were there on the floor beside him. They were both panting, winded by running. They were enlarging.
It was Alan and Glora, who had followed Polter from the boat, then diminished again and had come running through the tiny crack under the metal door of the laboratory.
They grew to a foot in size, down by Dr. Kent's legs. He was too unnerved to stand; he sat in a chair while Alan swiftly told him what had happened. Babs was in the golden cage. Dr. Kent knew that; but none of them knew what had happened to me.
"We must make you small, Father. We have the drugs, here with us."
"Yes! How much have you? Show me. Oh, my boy, that you are here--and Babs--"
"Don't you worry. We'll get away from him."
Glora and Alan had almost reached Dr. Kent's size before their excited fingers could get out the vials. They took some of the diminishing drug to check their growth. Alan handed his father a black vial.
"Yes, lad--"
"No! Wait, that's the wrong drug. This other--"
Dr. Kent had opened the vial. His trembling hand spilled some of the pellets, but none of them noticed it.
"Father, this one." Alan held an opalescent vial. "Take this one."
Glora said abruptly, "Listen! Is that someone coming?"
They thought they heard approaching footsteps. A moment passed but no one came into the room.
"Hurry," urged Glora. "That was nothing. We're waiting too long."
"My boy--Alan, after all these years--"
As they were about to take the diminishing drug a very queer sound came from across the room. A scuttling, scratching, and the drone of wings.
"God, Father--look!"
Over by the wall, a giant fly was running across the floor. The fly had eaten some of the sweetish powder.
The enlarging drug was loose!
A few drops of water lay mingled with the drug on the floor. And from the water nameless hideous things were rising!
CHAPTER IX
To Alan the first moments that followed the escape of the drug were the most horrible of his life. The discovery struck old Dr. Kent, Glora and Alan into a numb, blank confusion. They stood transfixed, staring with cold terror at the fly which was scurrying along the floor close to the wall. It was already as large as Alan's hand. It ran into the corner, hit the wall in its confused alarm, and turned back. Its wings were droning with an audible hum. It reared itself on its hairy legs, lifted and sailed across the room.
As though drawn by a magnet, Alan turned to watch it. It landed on the wall. Alan was aware of Dr. Kent rushing with trembling steps to a shelf where bottles stood. Glora was stricken into immobility, the blood draining from her face.
The fly flew again. It passed directly over Alan. Its body, with a membrane sac of eggs, was now as large as his head; its widespread transparent wings were beating with a reverberating drone.
Alan flung a bottle which was on the table beside him. It missed the fly, crashed against the ceiling, came down with splintering glass and spilling liquid. Fumes spread chokingly over the room.
The fly landed again on the floor. Larger now! Expanding with a horribly rapid growth. Glora flung something--a little wooden rack with a few empty test tubes in it. The rack struck the monstrous fly, but did not hurt it. The fly stood with hairy legs braced under its bulging body. Its multiple eyes were staring at the humans. And with its size must have come a sense of power, for it seemed to Alan that the monstrous insect was abnormally alert as it stood measuring its adversaries, gathering itself to attack them.
Only a few seconds had passed. Confused thoughts swept Alan. This fly with its growth would soon fill this room. Burst it; burst upward through a wrecked palace; soar out, and by the power of its size alone devastate this world.
He heard himself shouting, "Father, get back! It's too large! I've got to kill it!"
Could he wrestle with it and hope to win? Alan edged around the center table. He was bathed in cold sweat. This thing was horrifying! The fly was already half the length of his own body. In a moment it might be twice that! He was aware of Glora pulling at him, and his father rushing past him with a bottle of liquid, shouting:
"Alan! Run! You and the girl, get out of here! Into the other room--"
Then Alan saw the things on the floor! His foot crushed one with a slippery squash! Nameless, hideous, noisome things grown monstrous, risen from their lurking invisibility in the drops of water! Sodden, gray-black and green-slimed monsters of the deep; palpitating masses of pulp! One lay rocking, already as large as a football with streamers of ooze hanging from it, and squirting a black inky fluid. Others were rods of red jelly-pulp, already as large as lead pencils, quivering, twitching. Disease germs, these ghastly things, enlarging from the invisibility of a drop of water!
The fly landed with a thud on the center table. The fumes of the shattered bottle of chemicals were choking Alan. He flung himself toward the monster fly, but Glora held him.
"No! Escape to the other room!"
Dr. Kent was stamping the things upon the floor; pouring acids upon them. Some eluded him. The air in the room was unbreathable....
Alan and Glora reached the bedroom. The laboratory was a hideous chaos. They were aware of its outer door opening, disclosing the figure of Polter who, undoubtedly, had been attracted by the noise. He shouted a startled oath. Alan heard it above the beating wings of the monstrous fly. Things lurched at the opened door; Polter banged it upon them and rushed away, shouting the alarm through the palace.
Dr. Kent was stammering, "Not the enlarging drug, Glora, child, the other! Hurry!"
Alan helped Glora with the opalescent vial. Things were lurching toward this room, from the laboratory. Alan, with averted face, choked by the incoming fumes, slammed the door upon the gruesome turmoil.
They took the diminishing drug. The bedroom expanded. The hideous sounds from the laboratory, and the whole palace now ringing with a wild alarm, soon faded into blessed remoteness of distance....
"I think this is the way, Alan. Off there--a doorway from my bedroom. Polter always kept it locked, but it leads into a corridor. We must get out of here. A crack under the door--is that it, off there?" Dr. Kent pointed into the gloomy blur of distance. "We're horribly small--it's so far to run--and I've lost my sense of direction."
The drug had ceased its action. The wooden floor of the room had expanded to a spread of cellular surface, ridged with broken, tubelike tunnels; pits and jagged cave-mouths. A knothole yawned like a crater a hundred feet away.
"We are too small," Glora protested hurriedly. "The door is where you say, Dr. Kent, but miles away."
With the other drug, the room contracted. The floor surface shrank and smoothed a little. The door was distinguishable--a square panel several hundred feet in width and towering into the upper haze. The black line of the crack was visible along its bottom.
They ran to it. The top of the crack was ten feet above their heads. They ran under, across the wide intervening darkness toward a glow of light. Then they came from under the door into a corridor--and shrank against a cliff wall as with a rush of wind and pounding tread the blurred shapes of a man's huge feet and legs rushed past. The upper air was filled with rumbling shouts.
"We must chance it!" exclaimed Dr. Kent. "It's too far in this size. We must get larger--and if they see us, we'll fight our way out!"
In the turmoil of the doomed palace no one noticed them. They cast aside all restraint. It was too dangerous to wait. The excessive dose they took of the drug made the corridor shrink with dizzying speed. They rushed along its length. Alan hurled a little man aside who was in their path. They were already larger than Polter's people.
They squeezed out of a shrinking doorway. The dwindling island was a turmoil. Little figures were pouring from the palace. At the edge of the water. Alan, Glora and Dr. Kent stood for an instant looking behind them. The palace was rocking. Its roof heaved upward and then smashed and fell aside with the clatter of tumbling masonry. The monstrous fly, its hideous face mashed and oozing, reared itself up and, with broken torn wings, tried to soar away. But it could not. It slipped back. The drone and buzz of its fright sounded over the chaos of noise. Other things came lurching and twisting upward, slithering out....
The expanding body of the fly was pushing the palace walls outward. In a moment it collapsed and the fly emerged.
To Alan and his companions the scene was all shrinking into a miniature chaos of horror at their shoe tops. A diminuendo of screams mingled down there. Overhead were the stars, shining peacefully remote. Nearby lay a rapidly narrowing channel of shining water. A tiny city was across it. Lights were moving. The panic had spread from the island to Orena. Beyond the tiny city, was a range of mountains, a cliff, gleaming in the starlight, and tunnel-mouths.
Suddenly against the stars off there, Alan saw the enlarging figure of Polter, his hunched shape unmistakable. He was facing the other way. He lunged and scrambled into a yawning black hole in the mountains. Polter was escaping! None of these people except himself had the drugs. He was escaping with the golden cage, out of this doomed atomic world to the Earth above.
Glora murmured, "There is our way out. Your way. And that is Polter going. I do not think he saw us. So much is growing gigantic here."
Dr. Kent muttered, "We will wait a moment--wade across--or leap over, and follow him out. Babs is with him--dear God I hope so! This is a doomed realm!"
Alan held Glora close. And suddenly he was laughing--a madness, half hysterical. "Why, this, all this--why look, Glora, it's funny! This little world all excited, an ant-hill, outraged! Look! There's our giant sailboat!"
Down near their feet the inch-long sailboat stood at its dock. Tiny human figures were rushing for it; others, floundering in the water, were trying to climb upon it. Dr. Kent had stepped a foot or two from the shore, and tiny, lashing white rollers rocked the boat, almost engulfing it.
Alan's laugh rang out. "God! It's funny, isn't it? All those little creatures so excited!"
"Steady, lad!" Dr. Kent touched him. "Don't let yourself laugh! A moment now, then we'll wade across. Polter won't have much start on us. We mustn't get too close to him in size, but try and attack him unawares. We've got to get Babs away from him."
The narrowing passage rose hardly to their knees. They stepped ashore, well to one side of the toy city. Their growth had almost stopped. But suddenly Alan realized that Glora was diminishing! She had taken the other drug.
"Glora! What are you doing?"
"I must go back, Alan. This is my world, doomed perhaps, but I cannot forsake it now. I must give the enlarging drug to my father. And others who can rise and fight these monsters."
"Glora!"
Dr. Kent said hurriedly, "She's right, Alan. There is a chance they can save their city. For her to leave them would be dastardly."
She cried, "You go on up, Alan. You have enough of the drugs. I am going back!"
"No," he protested. "You can't! If you do, I'm coming with you!"
She clung to him. He felt her body diminishing within his encircling arms. His love for her swept him--this girl who had cajoled Polter, or tricked him and stolen several of the vials from him, heavens knows how, and followed him up to the other world. This girl whom Alan had come to love, was leaving him, perhaps forever.
As he stood there, with the miniature landscape at his feet in the wan starlight--the panic-stricken tiny city, the island with its monsters rising to overwhelm this tiny world--it seemed to Alan that if he let her go it was the end for him of all life's promised happiness.
"Alan, lad, come." His father was pulling him along. So horrible a choice! Alan thought that I was back on that island. But Babs, a prisoner in the golden cage, was with Polter, plunging upward in size. And his father was beside him, pleading.
"Alan--come--I can't get out alone, or save Babs. And Polter, with the power of this drug, can conquer and enslave our Earth as he has enslaved Orena--just one little city of one tiny golden atom! Believe me, lad, your duty lies above."
Glora's head was now down at Alan's waist. He stooped and kissed her white forehead; his fingers, just for an instant, smoothed her glossy hair.
"Good-bye, Glora."
She plunged away, and her tread as she dwindled mashed the forest behind the city. Alan and his father ran for the cliff. They were too large to squeeze into the little hole. But in a moment they made themselves smaller. They climbed as they dwindled; checked the drug action and rushed into the tunnel-mouth.
Alan stopped just for an instant to gaze out over the starlit scene. It was almost the same viewpoint from which he had his first sight of Glora's world only an hour or two before. The distant island beyond the city showed plainly with the shining water around it. The vegetation there was growing! And there were dark, horribly formless blobs lurching outward and rising with monstrous bulk against the background of the stars!
"Alan! Come, lad!"
With a prayer for Glora trembling on his lips, Alan plunged into the dim phosphorescent gloom of the tunnel.
CHAPTER X
To Babs and me the ride in the golden cage strapped to Polter's chest as he made his escape outward into largeness was an experience awesome and frightening almost beyond description. We heard the alarm in the palace on the island. Polter rushed to Dr. Kent's laboratory door, looked in, and in a moment banged it shut. Babs and I saw very little. We knew only that something terrible had happened; we could see only a blur with formless things in the void beneath our bars; and there were the choking fumes of chemicals surging at us.
Polter rushed through the castle corridor. We heard rumbling distant shouts.
"The drug is loose! The drug is loose! Monsters! Death for everyone!"
The room swayed with horrible dizzying lurches as Polter ran. We clung to the lattice bars, our legs and arms entwined. There were moments when Polter leaped, or suddenly stooped, and our reeling senses all but faded.
"Babs! Don't let go! Don't lose consciousness!"
If she should be limp, here in this lurching room, her body to be flung back and forth across its confines--that would be death in a moment. I didn't think I could hold her, but I managed to get an arm about her waist.
"Babs, are you all right?"
"I'm--all right, George. I can stand it. We're--he is enlarging."
"Yes."
I saw water far beneath us, lashed into a turmoil of foam with Polter's wading steps. There was a brief swaying vista of a toy city; starlight overhead; a lurching swaying miniature of landscape as Polter ran for the towering cliffs. Then he climbed and scrambled into the tunnel-mouth. Had he turned at that instant doubtless he would have seen the rising distant figures of Glora, Alan and Dr. Kent. But evidently he didn't see them. Nor did we.
Polter spoke only very occasionally to Babs. "Hold tightly!" It was a rumbling voice from above us. He made no move to touch the cage, except that a few times the great blur of his hand came up to adjust its angle.
The lurching and jolting was less violent in the tunnel. Polter's frenzy to escape was subsiding into calmness. He traversed the tunnel with a methodical stride. We were aware of him climbing over the noisome litter of the dead giant's body which blocked the tunnel's further end. We heard his astonished exclamations. But evidently he did not suspect what had happened, thinking only that the stupid messenger had miscalculated his growth and had been crushed.
We emerged into a less dim area. Polter did not stop at the fallen giant. Nothing mattered now to him, quite evidently, save his own exit with Babs from this atomic realm. His movements seemed calm, yet hurried.
We realized now how different an outward journey was from the trip coming in. This was all only an inch of golden quartz! The stages upward were frequently only a matter of growth in size; the distances in this vast desert realm of golden rock always were shrinking. Polter many times stood almost motionless until the closing, dwindling walls made him scramble upward into the greater space above.
It may have been an hour, or less. Babs and I, from our smaller viewpoint, with the landscape so frequently blurred by distance and Polter's movements, seldom recognized where we were. But I realized going out was far easier in every way than coming in. Easier to determine the route, since usually the diminishing caverns and gullies made the upward step obvious.... We knew when Polter scrambled up the incline ramp.
It seemed impossible for us to plan anything. Would Polter make the entire trip without a stop? It seemed so. We had no drugs, and our cage was barred beyond possibility of our getting out. But even if we had had the drugs, or had our door been open, there was no escape. An abyss of distance was always yawning beyond our lattice--the sheer precipice of Polter's body from his chest to the ground.
"Babs, we must make him stop. It he sits down to rest you might get him to take you out. I must reach his drugs."
"Yes. I'll try it, George."
Polter was momentarily standing motionless as though gazing around him, judging what to do next. His size seemed stationary. Beyond our bars we could see the distant circular walls as though this were some giant crater-pit in which Polter was standing. Then I thought I recognized it--the round, nearly vertical pit into which Alan had plunged his hand and arm. Above us then was a gully, blind at one end. And above that, the outer surface, the summit of the fragment of golden quartz.
"Babs, I know where we are! If he takes you out, keep his attention. I'll try and get one of his black vials. Make him hold you near the ground. If I see you there, in position where you can jump, I'll startle him. Babs it's desperately dangerous but I can't think of anything else. Jump. Get away from him. I'll keep his attention on me. Then I'll join you if I can--with the drug."
Polter was moving. We had no time to say more.
"I'll try it, George." For just an instant she clung to me with her soft arms about my neck. Our love was sweeping us in this desperate moment, and it seemed that above us was a remote Earth world holding the promise of all our dreams. Or were we cross-starred, doomed like the realm of the atom? Was this swift embrace now marking the end of everything for us?
Babs called, "Dr. Polter?"
We could feel his movements stopping.
"Yes? You are all right, Babs?"
She laughed--a ripple of silvery laughter--but there was tragic fear in her eyes as she gazed at me. "Yes, Dr. Polter, but breathless. Almost dead, but not quite. What happened? I want to come out and talk to you."
"Not now, little bird."
"But I want to." To me it was a miracle that she could call so lightly and hold that note of lugubrious laughter in her voice. "I'm hungry. Didn't you think of that? And frightened. Take me out."
He was sitting down! "You remind me that I am tired, Babs. And hungry, also. I haf a little food. You shall come out for just a short time."
"Thank you. Take me carefully."
Our tilted cage was near the ground as he seated himself. But it was still too far for me to jump.
I murmured, "Babs it's not close enough to the ground."
"Wait, George, I'll fix that. You hide! If he looks in he'll see you."
I scrambled back to my hiding place. Polter's huge fingers were fumbling at our bars. The little door sprang open.
"Come, Babs."
He held the cupped bowl of his hand to the doorway. "Come out."
"No!" she called. "It is too far down!"
"Come. That iss foolish."
"No! I'm afraid. Put the cage on the ground."
"Babs!" His finger and thumb came reaching in to seize her, but she avoided them.
"Dr. Polter! Don't! You'll crush me!"
"Then come out on my hand."
He seemed annoyed. I had scrambled back to the doorway; I knew he couldn't see me so long as the cage remained strapped to his shirt front.
I whispered, "I can make it, Babs!"
Polter was apparently on one elbow now, half turned to one side. From our cage, the sloping gleaming white surface of his stiff glossy shirt bosom went down a steep incline. His belt was down there, and the outward bulging curve of his lap--a spreading surface where I could land like a scuttling insect, unobserved, if only Babs could hold his attention.
I whispered vehemently, "Try it! Go out! Leave me--keep talking to him!"
She called instantly, "All right, then. Bring your hand! Closer! Carefully! It seems so high up here!"
She swung herself into his palm, and flung her arms about the great pillar of his crooked finger. The bowl of his hand moved slowly away. I heard her faint voice, and his overhead rumble.
I chanced it! I didn't know his exact position or which way he was looking.
Again I heard Bab's voice. "Careful, Dr. Polter. Don't let me fall!"
"Yes, little bird."
I let myself down from the tilted doorway, hung by my hand and dropped. I struck the ramp-like yielding surface of his shirt bosom. I slid, tumbling, scrambling, and landed softly in the huge folds of his trouser fabric. I was unhurt. The width of his belt, high as my body, was near me. I shrank against it. I found I could cling to its upper edge.
My hold came just in time. He shifted and sat up. I was lifted with a swoop of movement. When it steadied I saw above me the top of his knee. His left leg was crooked, the foot drawn close to him. Babs was perched up there on the knee summit. His right leg was outstretched. I was at the right side of his belt. I could dart off along that curving expanse of his leg and leap to the ground. If he would hold this position! One of the pouches of his belt was near me. The vial in it was black. The enlarging drug! I moved toward it.
But Babs was too high to jump from that summit of his crooked knee! I think she saw me at his belt. I heard her voice.
"I cannot eat up here. It is too high. Oh, please be careful how you move! I am so dizzy, so frightened! You move with such great jerks!"
He had what seemed a huge surface of bread and meat. He was breaking off crumbs to put before her. I reached the pouch of his belt. The vial was as long as my body. I tugged to try and lift it out.
All the giant contours of Polter's body shifted as he cautiously moved. I clung. I saw that Babs was being held gently between his thumb and forefinger. He lowered her to the ground, and she stood beside the bread and the meat he had placed there.
And she had the courage to laugh! "Why this--this is an enormous sandwich! You will have to break it."
He was leaning over her, half turned on his side. The vial came free. I shoved it; but I could not control its weight. I pushed desperately. It slid over the round brink of his right hip, and fell behind him. I heard the tinkling thud of it down on the rocks.
There was no alarm. I could not chance leaping from his hip. I scurried along the convex top of his outstretched leg, and beyond his knee I jumped.
I landed safely. I could see the black vial back across the broken rock surface, with the bulge of Polter's hip above it. I ran back and reached the vial, tugged at its huge stopper. The cork began to yield under my panting, desperate efforts. In a moment I would have a pellet of the enlarging drug; make away with it and startle Polter so that Babs might dart off and escape.
The huge stopper of the vial was larger than my head. It came suddenly out. I flung it away, plunged in my hand, and seized an enormous round pellet.
Then abruptly the alarm came, and I had not caused it! Polter ripped out a startled, rumbling curse and sat upright. Under the curve of his leg I saw Babs had been momentarily neglected. She was running.
Across the boulder-strewn plain, two tiny men had appeared. Polter had seen them.
They were the enlarging figures of Dr. Kent and Alan!
CHAPTER XI
The astounded Polter was taken wholly by surprise. He had no idea that anyone was following him. He thought he was alone with tiny Babs in this rock-strewn metal desert. What he saw as he scrambled to his feet were four insect-size humans, two of them at a distance, and two within reach of him, and all of them scampering in different directions. The ground was littered with crags and boulders; it was ridged and pitted, pock-marked, with tiny crater-holes and caves. The four scuttling figures almost instantly had disappeared from his sight.
I did not see where Babs went. I turned from the black vial of Polter's enlarging drug, and with the huge pellet under my arm I ran leaping over the rough ground and flung myself into a gully. I lay prone, flattened against a rock. In the murky distance of a pseudo-sky overhead, the monstrous head and shoulders of Polter were visible. I could see down to just below his waist. The empty cage with its door flapping open hung against his shirt-front. He had stooped to try and recover Babs. And instinctively his hands went to his belt to seize his enlarging drug.
They were fumbling there now. He hauled out an opalescent vial of the diminishing element. But his black vial was gone. His annoyance turned into fear as he searched for it in the other compartments of his belt. I had thought that he had more than one black vial, but now it seemed not. His huge face was swept with the panic of terror. He glanced wildly around him.
Through the open end of my gully I saw in the distance, miles away, the enlarging figure of Alan rising up. Then it ducked in back of a distant rising peak. Polter undoubtedly saw it. He was fumbling with his opalescent vial. In his confused panic he made the mistake of taking the diminishing drug and instantly seemed to regret it. His curse rumbled above me. His glance went down to the rocks at his feet, and there he saw his black vial lying with its stopper out. His body already was beginning to dwindle. He stooped, seized the vial, and took the enlarging drug. The shock of it mode him stagger; momentarily he disappeared from my line of vision but I could hear his panting breath and the unsteady pound of his footsteps.
I still held that huge round ball of the drug. I seized a loose stone and frantically knocked off a chunk-heaven knows how much. I shoved it into my mouth, chewed and hastily swallowed it. And with the lurching, swaying, shrinking gully closing in upon me, I ran to get out of its distant end.
I was heading toward where Alan and his father were hiding. I came from the gully into the open, just as I the walls closed behind me. The whole scene was a dizzying, blurred sway of contracting movement. I saw that I was in a circular valley now some five miles in diameter, with its jagged enclosing walls rising sheerly perpendicular out of sight in the haze overhead.
Polter had staggered backward. I saw him a mile or so away. His back at that instant was turned to me. He was now no more than three or four times my own height. He scrambled against the valley cliff wall as though trying to find a foothold to climb up it. He went a little way, but fell back.
Near me, Alan and old Dr. Kent suddenly appeared. I was larger than they. Alan gasped with surprise.
"You, George! You got Babs--"
"Yes--Babs is around somewhere! Stay down here! Don't lose her in size! Stay small! Search and--"
"But, George--"
"I'll tackle Polter. I've taken--God, I don't know how much I've taken of the drug!"
They were shrinking down by my boot tops. Alan shouted suddenly, "There's Babs! Thank God, she's all right."
She was so small that I couldn't see her, or even hear her, though she must have been calling to them. Alan again screamed up at me with his little voice:
"She's here, George! You--go on and get Polter! I can't overtake you--haven't enough of the drug!" His tiny voice was fading away. "Go and get him, George! This time--get him--"
I swung with a staggering step around to face the open valley. It had by now shrunk to nearly half a mile in width. Its smooth walls rose some two or three thousand feet to an upper circular horizon with murky distance overhead. Polter stood across from me. He had tried to climb out but could not. He saw me and came lurching. We were a quarter of a mile from each other. I ran forward through a shifting scene of shrinking rock walls and crawling, contracting ground. Quarter of a mile? It seemed hardly more than a score of running strides before Polter loomed close ahead of me. He was still nearly twice my size. I stooped, seized a loose boulder, and flung it. I missed his face, but, as his hand went up carrying a bare knife, by fortunate chance, the stone struck his wrist. The knife dropped to the rocks. He stooped to recover it, but I was upon him. As I felt his huge arms go about me, half lifting me, my foot struck the knife. But in an instant it was swept down into smallness beneath us as we expanded above it.
Both of us now were unarmed in this combat of size. I was an immature youth in Polter's first grip upon me. I heard his panting words, grimly triumphant:
"This--George Randolph, I haf been--waiting for so many years! The hunchback--takes his revenge--now--"
He lifted me. His great arms were unbelievably powerful, but I could feel them dwindling. I was enlarging faster. Just a few moments--if I could last a few moments.... My feet were off the ground, my chest pressed close against the little cage between us. He had a hand shoving back my head; his fingers sought my throat. I wound my legs around him, and then he tried to throw me down and fall upon me. But he had twisted and my back was against the cliff. The rocks were shoving at us, insistently pushing with almost a living movement. Polter staggered with me. His grip on my throat tightened, shutting off my breath. My senses whirled. His grim sardonic face over me became blurred. I tore futilely at my throat to break his choking grip. All the world was a roaring chaos to my fading senses. Then in the blur I saw horror sweep his expression. His fingers involuntarily loosened. I got a breath of blessed air, gasping, and my sight cleared.
Walls were closing around us! We were in a pit barely ten feet wide, with the top a few feet above Polter's head. The nearer wall shoved us again. Our bodies almost filled the shrinking pit! Polter lurched and cast me off. I half fell, striking my shoulder against the opposite wall, and I saw Polter leap at the dwindling brink and scramble out.
I was nearly wedged. As I rose, the top of the pit only reached my waist. Polter had fallen on the upper ground, and was on hands and knees. Instead of standing up, he lurched at me trying to shove me back. But I was out; I clutched at him. We were almost of a size now. We rolled on the ground, locked together; rolled to the brink of the pit and over it, as it shrank to a little round hole unnoticed beneath our threshing bodies!
* * * * *
At the side of the circular valley Alan and Dr. Kent crouched with the smaller figure of Babs between them. They saw Polter and me as two swaying gigantic forms locked in a death struggle, towering against the sky. Tremendous expanded bodies! They saw us come to grips; saw the great hunched Polter bend me backward, choking me.
Our bodies lurched. Our huge legs with a single step brought us to the center of the valley. It was a shrinking valley to Alan, Babs and Dr. Kent, for they too, were enlarging. But the fighting giant figures were growing faster. In only a moment their shoulders were up there in the sky, pressing against the narrowing cliff walls.
Alan gasped, "But George will be crushed! Look at him!"
Horror swept them as they crouched, watching. The enormous pillars of Polter's legs towered straight up from near at hand. Alan was aware of himself screaming:
"George, get out! You're too large! Too large for in here!"
As though his microscopic voice could reach me--my head a hundred feet above him. But he screamed it again. This was all in a few horrible moments, though it seemed to the three watchers an eternity. Alan was helpless to aid me; they had taken all of the enlarging drug they had.
Then they saw Polter cast me off. I lurched and struck, with my shoulders wedged against the cliff directly over where they crouched. The overhead sky was darkened as Polter scrambled upward.
Alan was still screaming futilely.
Babs huddled with white horrified face, staring. Then I went out after Polter. My disappearing legs were great dark blurs in the sky. Alan saw the valley now contracted to a thousand feet of width, with its cliffs equally as high. Then everything was smaller.... The sky overhead went dark again from cliff to cliff as a segment of rolling bodies momentarily spanned the opening.
Presently Alan realized that the valley had narrowed to a pit. He stood up. "Hurry! Now we can go after them. Up there!"
The opening above was empty. Polter and I were fighting some distance away....
Dr. Kent was soon large enough to scramble out of the pit. Alan handed the little Babs up to him and followed. Alan saw that they were now in a long gully, blind at one end with a five hundred foot perpendicular cliff. Against the wall, the Titanic form of Polter stood at bay. And I was confronting him. The summit of the cliff was lower than our waists. Triumph swept Alan; he saw that I was the larger! As Polter bored into me my backward step crossed the full width of the gully. Alan shouted:
"Down! Babs--Father!"
They had barely time to flatten themselves in a narrow crevice between upstanding rocks before my foot crashed down. For an instant the sole of my foot formed a flat black ceiling as it spanned the rocks. Then it lifted and was gone with a blurred swoop. They saw the white blur of my hand come down and snatch a tremendous boulder, raising it with a great sweep of movement into the sky. They saw me crash it against Polter; but it only struck his shoulder. He roared with anger. The whole sky was roaring and rumbling with our shouts and our panting breathing, and the ground was clattering, pounding with our giant tread. Huge loose boulders were tumbled in an avalanche everywhere.
Again it seemed to Alan that our lurching, heedlessly surging bodies must be crushed within these contracting walls. Only our locked, intertwined legs were visible; our bodies were lost in the sky. Then it seemed to Alan that I had heaved Polter upward. And followed him. We disappeared. There was a distant overhead rumble, and the murky sky, with vague patches of far-distant illumination in it, became empty of movement....
The walls presently were again closing upon Alan and his companions. They ran out of the open end of the shrinking little gully and came to a new upward vista....
* * * * *
I found myself a full head and shoulders taller than Polter. And he was tiring, panting heavily. His face was cut and bleeding from the blows of my fist. The rock I heaved struck his shoulder. He roared, head down, and bored into me. He was heavier than I. His weight flung me back. My foot slid on the loose stones of the gully floor. I did not know that Babs, Alan and their father were huddled under those stones!
My back struck the opposite wall. Polter's upflung knee caught me in the stomach, all but knocking the breath out of me. He was desperate, oblivious to the closing walls. And as he flung his arms with a grip about my neck, hanging, trying to bear down, I saw in his blazing dark eyes what seemed the light of suicide. I think that then, with a sudden frenzied madness he realized that he was beaten, and tried to pull us to the ground and let the walls crush us.
I summoned all my remaining strength and heaved us forward. I broke his hold. His body was jammed back against a lowering wall. Its top seemed almost at our knees. I shoved frantically. He fell backward and I jumped after him.
We were on a great rocky plateau. But it was shrinking, crawling into itself. Spots of light were in the murk overhead: there seemed a distant circular horizon of emptiness around us.
Polter was lying in a heap. But it was trickery, for as I incautiously bent over him his hand crashed a rock against my head. I reeled, with all the world turning black, but didn't fall. There was a terrible instant when my senses were going, but I fought to hold them. Blood from a wound on my forehead was streaming in my eyes. I was staggering. Then I realized that I was grimly tossing my head, shaking the blood away; and little by little my sight came back.
Polter was on his feet, rushing me. His fist came with an upward swing at my chin, but I ducked.
And suddenly, fighting up there in the open, my mind envisioned how gigantic we were! This was a great upland plateau, rounded with miles of distance and shadowy dimly radiant abyss beyond its circular horizon. And I was a thousand feet or more tall! A Titan, looming here in the sky!
My fist quite unexpectedly caught Polter's jaw. His simultaneous swing went wild, as I leapt backward from it. He staggered, and his arms dropped to his sides. I was crouched forward, guarded, watching him while I gasped for breath. There was the briefest of instant when an expression of vague surprise swept his face. But I had not knocked him out.
It was death overtaking him. His heart was yielding, overtaxed from the strain; and I think that there, at the last, he realized it. The blood drained suddenly from his face and lips, leaving them livid. I saw fear, then a wild horror in his eyes. He stood swaying. Then his knees gave way and he toppled. He fell from his height in the air where I stood gazing at him--fell forward on his face, his Titanic length spread all across the top of this rocky landscape!
For a moment I did not move. My head was reeling, my ears roaring. Blood streamed into my eyes. I wiped it away with a torn sleeve and stood panting, gazing at the glowing distance around me.
I was a Titan, standing there. The body of Polter was shrinking at my feet. The circular abyss of emptiness came nearer as this rocky eminence contracted.
Suddenly my attention went to the sky overhead. Vague distant lights were there. Then a broad flat blur seemed spread over me. Light everywhere was growing. Beyond the nearby brink of the abyss was a white reflected radiance from beneath. Abruptly I realized there was a level, flat white plain running far off there in the distance.
Overhead a radiance contracted into a spot of light. A shape in the sky moved! I heard a faraway rumble--a human voice!
The body of Polter lay at my feet. It was hardly the length of my forearm. I stood, a Titan.
And then, with a shock of realization, I saw how tiny I was! This was the broken top of that fragment of golden quartz the size of a walnut! I was standing there, under the lens of the giant microscope in Polter's dome-room laboratory, with half a dozen astounded Quebec police officials peering down at me!
CHAPTER XII
I need not detail the aftermath of our emergence from the atom. Dr. Kent and Babs followed me out within a few moments. But Alan was not with them! He had seen Polter fall. His father and Babs were safe. The sacrifice he had made in leaving Glora was no longer needed.
Down there on the rocky plateau, Dr. Kent suddenly realized that Alan was dwindling.
"Father, I have to! Don't you understand? Glora's world is menaced. I can't leave her like this. My duty to you and Babs is ended. I did my best. You two are safe now."
"Alan! You can't go!"
He was already down at Dr. Kent's waist, Babs' size. He held up his hand. "Dad, don't try to stop me. Good-bye." His rugged youthful face was flushed, his voice choked. "You--you've been a mighty good father to me. Always."
Babs flung her arms about him. "Alan. Don't!"
"But I must." He smiled whimsically as he kissed her. "You wouldn't want to leave George, would you? Never see him again? I'm not asking you to do that, am I?"
"But, Alan--"
"You've been a great little pal, Babs. But I have to go."
"Alan! You talk as though you were never coming back!"
"Do I? But of course I'm coming back!" He cast her off. "Babs, listen. Father's upset. That's natural. You tell him not to worry. I'll be careful, and do what I can to save that little city. I must find Glora and--"
Babs was suddenly trembling with eagerness for him. "Yes! Of course you must, Alan!"
"I'll find her and bring her out here! I'll do it! Don't you worry." He was dwindling fast. Dr. Kent had collapsed to a rock, staring down with horror-stricken eyes. Alan called up to Babs:
"Listen! Have George watch the chunk of gold quartz. Have it guarded and watched day and night. Handle it carefully, Babs!"
"Yes! Yes! How long will you be gone, Alan?"
"How do I know? But I'll come back--don't worry. Maybe in only a day or two of your time."
"Right! Good-bye, Alan!"
"Good-bye," his tiny voice echoed up.
Babs could see his miniature face smiling up at her. She smiled back and waved her arm as he vanished into the pebbles at her feet.
* * * * *
It has broken Dr. Kent. A month now has passed. He seldom mentions Alan to Babs and me. But when he does, he tries to smile and say that Alan soon will return. He has been very ill this last week, though he is better now. He did not tell us that he was working to compound another supply of the drugs, but we knew it very well.
And his emotion, the strain of it, made him break. He was in bed a week. We are living in New York, quite near the Museum of the American Society for Scientific Research. In a room of the biological department there, the precious fragment of golden quartz lies guarded. A microscope is over it, and there is never a moment of the day or night without an alert, keen-eyed watcher peering down.
But nothing has appeared. Neither friend or foe--nothing. I cannot say so to Babs, but often I fear that Dr. Kent will suddenly die, and the secret of his drugs die with him. I hinted that I would make a trip into the atom if he would let me, but it excited him so greatly I had to laugh it off with the assurance that of course Alan would soon return safely to us. Dr. Kent is an old man now, unnaturally old, with, it seems, the full weight of eighty years pressing upon him. He cannot stand this emotion. I think he is despairingly summoning strength to work upon his drugs, fearful that at any moment, he will not be equal to it. Yet more fearful to disclose the secret and unloose such a diabolic power.
There are nights when with Dr. Kent asleep, Babs and I slip away and go to the Museum. We dismiss the guard for a time, and in that private room we sit by the microscope to watch. The fragment of golden quartz lies on its clean white slab with a brilliant light upon it.
Mysterious little golden rock! What secrets are there, down beyond the vanishing point in the realm of the infinitely small? Our human longings go to Alan and Glora.
But sometimes we are swept by the greater viewpoint. Awed by the mysteries of nature, we realize how very small and unimportant we are in the vast scheme of things. We envisage the infinite reaches of astronomical space overhead. Realms of largeness unfathomable. And at our feet, everywhere, a myriad entrances into the infinitely small. With ourselves in between--with our fatuous human consciousness that we are of some importance to it all!
Truly there are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy!
THE GUN
By Philip K. Dick
Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead. Only the gun showed signs of life ... and the trespassers had wrecked that for all time. The return journey to pick up the treasure would be a cinch ... they smiled.
The Captain peered into the eyepiece of the telescope. He adjusted the focus quickly.
"It was an atomic fission we saw, all right," he said presently. He sighed and pushed the eyepiece away. "Any of you who wants to look may do so. But it's not a pretty sight."
"Let me look," Tance the archeologist said. He bent down to look, squinting. "Good Lord!" He leaped violently back, knocking against Dorle, the Chief Navigator.
"Why did we come all this way, then?" Dorle asked, looking around at the other men. "There's no point even in landing. Let's go back at once."
"Perhaps he's right," the biologist murmured. "But I'd like to look for myself, if I may." He pushed past Tance and peered into the sight.
He saw a vast expanse, an endless surface of gray, stretching to the edge of the planet. At first he thought it was water but after a moment he realized that it was slag, pitted, fused slag, broken only by hills of rock jutting up at intervals. Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead.
"I see," Fomar said, backing away from the eyepiece. "Well, I won't find any legumes there." He tried to smile, but his lips stayed unmoved. He stepped away and stood by himself, staring past the others.
"I wonder what the atmospheric sample will show," Tance said.
"I think I can guess," the Captain answered. "Most of the atmosphere is poisoned. But didn't we expect all this? I don't see why we're so surprised. A fission visible as far away as our system must be a terrible thing."
He strode off down the corridor, dignified and expressionless. They watched him disappear into the control room.
As the Captain closed the door the young woman turned. "What did the telescope show? Good or bad?"
"Bad. No life could possibly exist. Atmosphere poisoned, water vaporized, all the land fused."
"Could they have gone underground?"
The Captain slid back the port window so that the surface of the planet under them was visible. The two of them stared down, silent and disturbed. Mile after mile of unbroken ruin stretched out, blackened slag, pitted and scarred, and occasional heaps of rock.
Suddenly Nasha jumped. "Look! Over there, at the edge. Do you see it?"
They stared. Something rose up, not rock, not an accidental formation. It was round, a circle of dots, white pellets on the dead skin of the planet. A city? Buildings of some kind?
"Please turn the ship," Nasha said excitedly. She pushed her dark hair from her face. "Turn the ship and let's see what it is!"
The ship turned, changing its course. As they came over the white dots the Captain lowered the ship, dropping it down as much as he dared. "Piers," he said. "Piers of some sort of stone. Perhaps poured artificial stone. The remains of a city."
"Oh, dear," Nasha murmured. "How awful." She watched the ruins disappear behind them. In a half-circle the white squares jutted from the slag, chipped and cracked, like broken teeth.
"There's nothing alive," the Captain said at last. "I think we'll go right back; I know most of the crew want to. Get the Government Receiving Station on the sender and tell them what we found, and that we—"
He staggered.
The first atomic shell had struck the ship, spinning it around. The Captain fell to the floor, crashing into the control table. Papers and instruments rained down on him. As he started to his feet the second shell struck. The ceiling cracked open, struts and girders twisted and bent. The ship shuddered, falling suddenly down, then righting itself as automatic controls took over.
The Captain lay on the floor by the smashed control board. In the corner Nasha struggled to free herself from the debris.
Outside the men were already sealing the gaping leaks in the side of the ship, through which the precious air was rushing, dissipating into the void beyond. "Help me!" Dorle was shouting. "Fire over here, wiring ignited." Two men came running. Tance watched helplessly, his eyeglasses broken and bent.
"So there is life here, after all," he said, half to himself. "But how could—"
"Give us a hand," Fomar said, hurrying past. "Give us a hand, we've got to land the ship!"
It was night. A few stars glinted above them, winking through the drifting silt that blew across the surface of the planet.
Dorle peered out, frowning. "What a place to be stuck in." He resumed his work, hammering the bent metal hull of the ship back into place. He was wearing a pressure suit; there were still many small leaks, and radioactive particles from the atmosphere had already found their way into the ship.
Nasha and Fomar were sitting at the table in the control room, pale and solemn, studying the inventory lists.
"Low on carbohydrates," Fomar said. "We can break down the stored fats if we want to, but—"
"I wonder if we could find anything outside." Nasha went to the window. "How uninviting it looks." She paced back and forth, very slender and small, her face dark with fatigue. "What do you suppose an exploring party would find?"
Fomar shrugged. "Not much. Maybe a few weeds growing in cracks here and there. Nothing we could use. Anything that would adapt to this environment would be toxic, lethal."
Nasha paused, rubbing her cheek. There was a deep scratch there, still red and swollen. "Then how do you explain—it? According to your theory the inhabitants must have died in their skins, fried like yams. But who fired on us? Somebody detected us, made a decision, aimed a gun."
"And gauged distance," the Captain said feebly from the cot in the corner. He turned toward them. "That's the part that worries me. The first shell put us out of commission, the second almost destroyed us. They were well aimed, perfectly aimed. We're not such an easy target."
"True." Fomar nodded. "Well, perhaps we'll know the answer before we leave here. What a strange situation! All our reasoning tells us that no life could exist; the whole planet burned dry, the atmosphere itself gone, completely poisoned."
"The gun that fired the projectiles survived," Nasha said. "Why not people?"
"It's not the same. Metal doesn't need air to breathe. Metal doesn't get leukemia from radioactive particles. Metal doesn't need food and water."
There was silence.
"A paradox," Nasha said. "Anyhow, in the morning I think we should send out a search party. And meanwhile we should keep on trying to get the ship in condition for the trip back."
"It'll be days before we can take off," Fomar said. "We should keep every man working here. We can't afford to send out a party."
Nasha smiled a little. "We'll send you in the first party. Maybe you can discover—what was it you were so interested in?"
"Legumes. Edible legumes."
"Maybe you can find some of them. Only—"
"Only what?"
"Only watch out. They fired on us once without even knowing who we were or what we came for. Do you suppose that they fought with each other? Perhaps they couldn't imagine anyone being friendly, under any circumstances. What a strange evolutionary trait, inter-species warfare. Fighting within the race!"
"We'll know in the morning," Fomar said. "Let's get some sleep."
The sun came up chill and austere. The three people, two men and a woman, stepped through the port, dropping down on the hard ground below.
"What a day," Dorle said grumpily. "I said how glad I'd be to walk on firm ground again, but—"
"Come on," Nasha said. "Up beside me. I want to say something to you. Will you excuse us, Tance?"
Tance nodded gloomily. Dorle caught up with Nasha. They walked together, their metal shoes crunching the ground underfoot. Nasha glanced at him.
"Listen. The Captain is dying. No one knows except the two of us. By the end of the day-period of this planet he'll be dead. The shock did something to his heart. He was almost sixty, you know."
Dorle nodded. "That's bad. I have a great deal of respect for him. You will be captain in his place, of course. Since you're vice-captain now—"
"No. I prefer to see someone else lead, perhaps you or Fomar. I've been thinking over the situation and it seems to me that I should declare myself mated to one of you, whichever of you wants to be captain. Then I could devolve the responsibility."
"Well, I don't want to be captain. Let Fomar do it."
Nasha studied him, tall and blond, striding along beside her in his pressure suit. "I'm rather partial to you," she said. "We might try it for a time, at least. But do as you like. Look, we're coming to something."
They stopped walking, letting Tance catch up. In front of them was some sort of a ruined building. Dorle stared around thoughtfully.
"Do you see? This whole place is a natural bowl, a huge valley. See how the rock formations rise up on all sides, protecting the floor. Maybe some of the great blast was deflected here."
They wandered around the ruins, picking up rocks and fragments. "I think this was a farm," Tance said, examining a piece of wood. "This was part of a tower windmill."
"Really?" Nasha took the stick and turned it over. "Interesting. But let's go; we don't have much time."
"Look," Dorle said suddenly. "Off there, a long way off. Isn't that something?" He pointed.
Nasha sucked in her breath. "The white stones."
"What?"
Nasha looked up at Dorle. "The white stones, the great broken teeth. We saw them, the Captain and I, from the control room." She touched Dorle's arm gently. "That's where they fired from. I didn't think we had landed so close."
"What is it?" Tance said, coming up to them. "I'm almost blind without my glasses. What do you see?"
"The city. Where they fired from."
"Oh." All three of them stood together. "Well, let's go," Tance said. "There's no telling what we'll find there." Dorle frowned at him.
"Wait. We don't know what we would be getting into. They must have patrols. They probably have seen us already, for that matter."
"They probably have seen the ship itself," Tance said. "They probably know right now where they can find it, where they can blow it up. So what difference does it make whether we go closer or not?"
"That's true," Nasha said. "If they really want to get us we haven't a chance. We have no armaments at all; you know that."
"I have a hand weapon." Dorle nodded. "Well, let's go on, then. I suppose you're right, Tance."
"But let's stay together," Tance said nervously. "Nasha, you're going too fast."
Nasha looked back. She laughed. "If we expect to get there by nightfall we must go fast."
They reached the outskirts of the city at about the middle of the afternoon. The sun, cold and yellow, hung above them in the colorless sky. Dorle stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the city.
"Well, there it is. What's left of it."
There was not much left. The huge concrete piers which they had noticed were not piers at all, but the ruined foundations of buildings. They had been baked by the searing heat, baked and charred almost to the ground. Nothing else remained, only this irregular circle of white squares, perhaps four miles in diameter.
Dorle spat in disgust. "More wasted time. A dead skeleton of a city, that's all."
"But it was from here that the firing came," Tance murmured. "Don't forget that."
"And by someone with a good eye and a great deal of experience," Nasha added. "Let's go."
They walked into the city between the ruined buildings. No one spoke. They walked in silence, listening to the echo of their footsteps.
"It's macabre," Dorle muttered. "I've seen ruined cities before but they died of old age, old age and fatigue. This was killed, seared to death. This city didn't die—it was murdered."
"I wonder what the city was called," Nasha said. She turned aside, going up the remains of a stairway from one of the foundations. "Do you think we might find a signpost? Some kind of plaque?"
She peered into the ruins.
"There's nothing there," Dorle said impatiently. "Come on."
"Wait." Nasha bent down, touching a concrete stone. "There's something inscribed on this."
"What is it?" Tance hurried up. He squatted in the dust, running his gloved fingers over the surface of the stone. "Letters, all right." He took a writing stick from the pocket of his pressure suit and copied the inscription on a bit of paper. Dorle glanced over his shoulder. The inscription was:
FRANKLIN APARTMENTS
"That's this city," Nasha said softly. "That was its name."
Tance put the paper in his pocket and they went on. After a time Dorle said, "Nasha, you know, I think we're being watched. But don't look around."
The woman stiffened. "Oh? Why do you say that? Did you see something?"
"No. I can feel it, though. Don't you?"
Nasha smiled a little. "I feel nothing, but perhaps I'm more used to being stared at." She turned her head slightly. "Oh!"
Dorle reached for his hand weapon. "What is it? What do you see?" Tance had stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth half open.
"The gun," Nasha said. "It's the gun."
"Look at the size of it. The size of the thing." Dorle unfastened his hand weapon slowly. "That's it, all right."
The gun was huge. Stark and immense it pointed up at the sky, a mass of steel and glass, set in a huge slab of concrete. Even as they watched the gun moved on its swivel base, whirring underneath. A slim vane turned with the wind, a network of rods atop a high pole.
"It's alive," Nasha whispered. "It's listening to us, watching us."
The gun moved again, this time clockwise. It was mounted so that it could make a full circle. The barrel lowered a trifle, then resumed its original position.
"But who fires it?" Tance said.
Dorle laughed. "No one. No one fires it."
They stared at him. "What do you mean?"
"It fires itself."
They couldn't believe him. Nasha came close to him, frowning, looking up at him. "I don't understand. What do you mean, it fires itself?"
"Watch, I'll show you. Don't move." Dorle picked up a rock from the ground. He hesitated a moment and then tossed the rock high in the air. The rock passed in front of the gun. Instantly the great barrel moved, the vanes contracted.
The rock fell to the ground. The gun paused, then resumed its calm swivel, its slow circling.
"You see," Dorle said, "it noticed the rock, as soon as I threw it up in the air. It's alert to anything that flies or moves above the ground level. Probably it detected us as soon as we entered the gravitational field of the planet. It probably had a bead on us from the start. We don't have a chance. It knows all about the ship. It's just waiting for us to take off again."
"I understand about the rock," Nasha said, nodding. "The gun noticed it, but not us, since we're on the ground, not above. It's only designed to combat objects in the sky. The ship is safe until it takes off again, then the end will come."
"But what's this gun for?" Tance put in. "There's no one alive here. Everyone is dead."
"It's a machine," Dorle said. "A machine that was made to do a job. And it's doing the job. How it survived the blast I don't know. On it goes, waiting for the enemy. Probably they came by air in some sort of projectiles."
"The enemy," Nasha said. "Their own race. It is hard to believe that they really bombed themselves, fired at themselves."
"Well, it's over with. Except right here, where we're standing. This one gun, still alert, ready to kill. It'll go on until it wears out."
"And by that time we'll be dead," Nasha said bitterly.
"There must have been hundreds of guns like this," Dorle murmured. "They must have been used to the sight, guns, weapons, uniforms. Probably they accepted it as a natural thing, part of their lives, like eating and sleeping. An institution, like the church and the state. Men trained to fight, to lead armies, a regular profession. Honored, respected."
Tance was walking slowly toward the gun, peering nearsightedly up at it. "Quite complex, isn't it? All those vanes and tubes. I suppose this is some sort of a telescopic sight." His gloved hand touched the end of a long tube.
Instantly the gun shifted, the barrel retracting. It swung—
"Don't move!" Dorle cried. The barrel swung past them as they stood, rigid and still. For one terrible moment it hesitated over their heads, clicking and whirring, settling into position. Then the sounds died out and the gun became silent.
Tance smiled foolishly inside his helmet. "I must have put my finger over the lens. I'll be more careful." He made his way up onto the circular slab, stepping gingerly behind the body of the gun. He disappeared from view.
"Where did he go?" Nasha said irritably. "He'll get us all killed."
"Tance, come back!" Dorle shouted. "What's the matter with you?"
"In a minute." There was a long silence. At last the archeologist appeared. "I think I've found something. Come up and I'll show you."
"What is it?"
"Dorle, you said the gun was here to keep the enemy off. I think I know why they wanted to keep the enemy off."
They were puzzled.
"I think I've found what the gun is supposed to guard. Come and give me a hand."
"All right," Dorle said abruptly. "Let's go." He seized Nasha's hand. "Come on. Let's see what he's found. I thought something like this might happen when I saw that the gun was—"
"Like what?" Nasha pulled her hand away. "What are you talking about? You act as if you knew what he's found."
"I do." Dorle smiled down at her. "Do you remember the legend that all races have, the myth of the buried treasure, and the dragon, the serpent that watches it, guards it, keeping everyone away?"
She nodded. "Well?"
Dorle pointed up at the gun.
"That," he said, "is the dragon. Come on."
Between the three of them they managed to pull up the steel cover and lay it to one side. Dorle was wet with perspiration when they finished.
"It isn't worth it," he grunted. He stared into the dark yawning hole. "Or is it?"
Nasha clicked on her hand lamp, shining the beam down the stairs. The steps were thick with dust and rubble. At the bottom was a steel door.
"Come on," Tance said excitedly. He started down the stairs. They watched him reach the door and pull hopefully on it without success. "Give a hand!"
"All right." They came gingerly after him. Dorle examined the door. It was bolted shut, locked. There was an inscription on the door but he could not read it.
"Now what?" Nasha said.
Dorle took out his hand weapon. "Stand back. I can't think of any other way." He pressed the switch. The bottom of the door glowed red. Presently it began to crumble. Dorle clicked the weapon off. "I think we can get through. Let's try."
The door came apart easily. In a few minutes they had carried it away in pieces and stacked the pieces on the first step. Then they went on, flashing the light ahead of them.
They were in a vault. Dust lay everywhere, on everything, inches thick. Wood crates lined the walls, huge boxes and crates, packages and containers. Tance looked around curiously, his eyes bright.
"What exactly are all these?" he murmured. "Something valuable, I would think." He picked up a round drum and opened it. A spool fell to the floor, unwinding a black ribbon. He examined it, holding it up to the light.
"Look at this!"
They came around him. "Pictures," Nasha said. "Tiny pictures."
"Records of some kind." Tance closed the spool up in the drum again. "Look, hundreds of drums." He flashed the light around. "And those crates. Let's open one."
Dorle was already prying at the wood. The wood had turned brittle and dry. He managed to pull a section away.
It was a picture. A boy in a blue garment, smiling pleasantly, staring ahead, young and handsome. He seemed almost alive, ready to move toward them in the light of the hand lamp. It was one of them, one of the ruined race, the race that had perished.
For a long time they stared at the picture. At last Dorle replaced the board.
"All these other crates," Nasha said. "More pictures. And these drums. What are in the boxes?"
"This is their treasure," Tance said, almost to himself. "Here are their pictures, their records. Probably all their literature is here, their stories, their myths, their ideas about the universe."
"And their history," Nasha said. "We'll be able to trace their development and find out what it was that made them become what they were."
Dorle was wandering around the vault. "Odd," he murmured. "Even at the end, even after they had begun to fight they still knew, someplace down inside them, that their real treasure was this, their books and pictures, their myths. Even after their big cities and buildings and industries were destroyed they probably hoped to come back and find this. After everything else was gone."
"When we get back home we can agitate for a mission to come here," Tance said. "All this can be loaded up and taken back. We'll be leaving about—"
He stopped.
"Yes," Dorle said dryly. "We'll be leaving about three day-periods from now. We'll fix the ship, then take off. Soon we'll be home, that is, if nothing happens. Like being shot down by that—"
"Oh, stop it!" Nasha said impatiently. "Leave him alone. He's right: all this must be taken back home, sooner or later. We'll have to solve the problem of the gun. We have no choice."
Dorle nodded. "What's your solution, then? As soon as we leave the ground we'll be shot down." His face twisted bitterly. "They've guarded their treasure too well. Instead of being preserved it will lie here until it rots. It serves them right."
"How?"
"Don't you see? This was the only way they knew, building a gun and setting it up to shoot anything that came along. They were so certain that everything was hostile, the enemy, coming to take their possessions away from them. Well, they can keep them."
Nasha was deep in thought, her mind far away. Suddenly she gasped. "Dorle," she said. "What's the matter with us? We have no problem. The gun is no menace at all."
The two men stared at her.
"No menace?" Dorle said. "It's already shot us down once. And as soon as we take off again—"
"Don't you see?" Nasha began to laugh. "The poor foolish gun, it's completely harmless. Even I could deal with it alone."
"You?"
Her eyes were flashing. "With a crowbar. With a hammer or a stick of wood. Let's go back to the ship and load up. Of course we're at its mercy in the air: that's the way it was made. It can fire into the sky, shoot down anything that flies. But that's all! Against something on the ground it has no defenses. Isn't that right?"
Dorle nodded slowly. "The soft underbelly of the dragon. In the legend, the dragon's armor doesn't cover its stomach." He began to laugh. "That's right. That's perfectly right."
"Let's go, then," Nasha said. "Let's get back to the ship. We have work to do here."
It was early the next morning when they reached the ship. During the night the Captain had died, and the crew had ignited his body, according to custom. They had stood solemnly around it until the last ember died. As they were going back to their work the woman and the two men appeared, dirty and tired, still excited.
And presently, from the ship, a line of people came, each carrying something in his hands. The line marched across the gray slag, the eternal expanse of fused metal. When they reached the weapon they all fell on the gun at once, with crowbars, hammers, anything that was heavy and hard.
The telescopic sights shattered into bits. The wiring was pulled out, torn to shreds. The delicate gears were smashed, dented.
Finally the warheads themselves were carried off and the firing pins removed.
The gun was smashed, the great weapon destroyed. The people went down into the vault and examined the treasure. With its metal-armored guardian dead there was no danger any longer. They studied the pictures, the films, the crates of books, the jeweled crowns, the cups, the statues.
At last, as the sun was dipping into the gray mists that drifted across the planet they came back up the stairs again. For a moment they stood around the wrecked gun looking at the unmoving outline of it.
Then they started back to the ship. There was still much work to be done. The ship had been badly hurt, much had been damaged and lost. The important thing was to repair it as quickly as possible, to get it into the air.
With all of them working together it took just five more days to make it spaceworthy.
Nasha stood in the control room, watching the planet fall away behind them. She folded her arms, sitting down on the edge of the table.
"What are you thinking?" Dorle said.
"I? Nothing."
"Are you sure?"
"I was thinking that there must have been a time when this planet was quite different, when there was life on it."
"I suppose there was. It's unfortunate that no ships from our system came this far, but then we had no reason to suspect intelligent life until we saw the fission glow in the sky."
"And then it was too late."
"Not quite too late. After all, their possessions, their music, books, their pictures, all of that will survive. We'll take them home and study them, and they'll change us. We won't be the same afterwards. Their sculpturing, especially. Did you see the one of the great winged creature, without a head or arms? Broken off, I suppose. But those wings— It looked very old. It will change us a great deal."
"When we come back we won't find the gun waiting for us," Nasha said. "Next time it won't be there to shoot us down. We can land and take the treasure, as you call it." She smiled up at Dorle. "You'll lead us back there, as a good captain should."
"Captain?" Dorle grinned. "Then you've decided."
Nasha shrugged. "Fomar argues with me too much. I think, all in all, I really prefer you."
"Then let's go," Dorle said. "Let's go back home."
The ship roared up, flying over the ruins of the city. It turned in a huge arc and then shot off beyond the horizon, heading into outer space.
Down below, in the center of the ruined city, a single half-broken detector vane moved slightly, catching the roar of the ship. The base of the great gun throbbed painfully, straining to turn. After a moment a red warning light flashed on down inside its destroyed works.
And a long way off, a hundred miles from the city, another warning light flashed on, far underground. Automatic relays flew into action. Gears turned, belts whined. On the ground above a section of metal slag slipped back. A ramp appeared.
A moment later a small cart rushed to the surface.
The cart turned toward the city. A second cart appeared behind it. It was loaded with wiring cables. Behind it a third cart came, loaded with telescopic tube sights. And behind came more carts, some with relays, some with firing controls, some with tools and parts, screws and bolts, pins and nuts. The final one contained atomic warheads.
The carts lined up behind the first one, the lead cart. The lead cart started off, across the frozen ground, bumping calmly along, followed by the others. Moving toward the city.
To the damaged gun.
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA
By Paul Ernst
(Editor's note: This document, written on a curious kind of parchment and tied to a piece of driftwood, was reported to have been picked out of the sea near the Fiji Islands. The first and last pages were so water soaked as to be indecipherable.)
Yacht Rosa was due to leave the San Francisco harbor in two hours.
We were going on some mysterious cruise to the South Seas, the details of which I did not know.
"Professor George Berry, the famous zoologist, and myself are going to do some exploring that is hazardous in the extreme," Stanley had said. "For purely mechanical reasons we need a third. You are young and have no family ties, so I thought I'd ask you to go with us. I'd rather not tell you what it's all about until we are on our way."
That was all the explanation he had given. It was sufficient. I was fed-up with life just then: I had enough money to avoid work and was tired of playing.
"I must warn you that you'll risk your life in this," he had continued, in answer to my acceptance of his invitation.
And I had replied that the hazard, whatever it might be, only made the trip appear more desirable.
So here I was, on board the yacht, about to sail for far places on some scientific mission which had so far been kept veiled in secrecy and which was represented as "hazardous in the extreme." It sounded attractive!
* * * * *
Stanley came aboard accompanied by a lean, wiry man with iron gray hair and cool, alert black eyes.
"Hello, Martin," Stanley greeted me. "I want you to meet Professor Berry, the real leader of this expedition. Professor, this young red-head is Martin Grey, a sort of nephew by adoption who knows more about night life than most cabaret proprietors--and not much of anything else. He has shaken the dangers of the gold-diggers to face with us the dangers of the tropic seas."
The professor gripped my hand, and his cool black eyes gazed into mine with a kind of friendly frostiness.
"Don't pay any attention to him," he advised me. "Twenty years ago, when I first met him, he was on his way to Africa to shoot elephants because some revue beauty had just thrown him over and he felt he ought to do something big and heroic about it. It was shortly afterward that he decided to stay a bachelor all his life, and became such a confirmed woman hater."
He smiled thinly at Stanley's prod in the ribs, and the two went below, talking and laughing with the intimacy of old friendship.
I stayed on deck and soon found myself watching, with no little wonder, an enormous truck and trailer arrangement that drew up on the dock heavily loaded with a single immense crate. It was for us. I speculated as to what it could possibly contain.
It was a twenty or twenty-five-foot cube solidly braced with strap-iron and steel brackets. It evidently contained something fragile. The yacht's donkey engine lowered a hook for it, and swung it over the side and into the hold as daintily as though it had been packed with explosives.
The last of the ship's stores followed it over the side: the group of newspaper reporters who had been trying to pump the captain and first mate for a story were warned to leave, and we were ready to go. Precisely where and for what purpose?
I was to find out almost immediately.
Even as the yacht nosed superciliously away from the dock, the steward approached me with the information that lunch was ready. I went to the small, compactly furnished dining salon, where I was joined by Stanley and the professor.
* * * * *
There were only the three of us at the table. Stanley Browne, noted big game hunter and semi-retired owner of the great Browne Glassworks at Altoona, a man fifteen years my senior but tanned and fit looking; Professor Berry, well known in scientific circles; and myself, known in no branch of activity save the one Stanley had jested about--the night life of my home city, Chicago.
"It's time you knew just what you're up against," said Stanley to me after the consomme had been served. "Now that we've actually sailed, there's no longer any need for secrecy. Indeed there never has been urgent need of it: the Professor and myself merely thought we might provoke incredulity and comment if we stated the purpose of our trip publicly."
He buttered a roll.
"We--the Professor and you and I--are going in for some deep sea diving. And when I say deep, I mean deep. We are going to investigate conditions as they exist one mile down from the surface of the ocean."
"A mile!" I exclaimed. "Why--"
There I stopped. I had only a layman's knowledge of such matters. But I knew that the limit of man's submersion, till then at any rate, was a matter of a few hundred feet.
"Sounds incredible, doesn't it," said Stanley with a smile. "But that's what we're going to do--if the Professor's gadget works as he seems to think it will."
"I don't think it, I know it," retorted the Professor. "And man, man, the things we may see down there! New and unknown species--a world no human has ever seen before--perhaps the secret of all of life--"
"Dragons, sea-serpents, and what not!" Stanley finished with a grin.
"Or, possibly--nothing at all." The Professor shrugged. "I mustn't let my scientific curiosity run away with me. Perhaps we'll find no new thing down down. Our deep sea dredging and classification may already embrace most of the forms of life in the greater depths."
"If it does I want my money back," said Stanley. "When you asked me to finance this expedition for you, I agreed on condition that you would show me a thrill--some real big game, even if I would not be able to shoot it. If we draw blank--"
"The mere descent should satisfy you, my adventuring friend," replied the Professor brusquely. "I think you'll find that thrilling enough."
"But--a mile under the surface!" I marveled, feeling not entirely comfortable. "The pressure! Enormous! It can't be done! That is, I mean, can it be done?"
"It had better be," said Stanley with a humor that I did not entirely appreciate. "If it isn't, the three of us are going to be pressed out like three sheets of tissue paper! For we are assuredly going down that far in the Professor's gadget."
"Was that the thing I saw hoisted aboard just before we left?"
"That was it. We'll stroll around after lunch and look it over."
If I had taken this cruise in search of distraction--I was surely going to be successful! That was plain!
"Just where are we going?" I asked. "You said something about the South Seas, but you've named no special part of them."
"We're bound for Penguin Deep. That's a delightful little dimple in the Kermadec Trough, which," Stanley explained, "is north-northeast of New Zealand almost halfway up to the Fiji Islands. Penguin Deep is ticketed at five thousand one hundred and fifty feet, but it probably runs deeper in spots."
The rest of the meal was consumed in silence. I hardly tasted what I ate; I remember that. Over five thousand feet down--where no man had ever ventured before! Could we make it?
I tried to recall my neglected physics lessons and compute the pressure that far down. I couldn't. But I knew it must be an appalling total of tons to the square inch. What possible arrangement could they have brought in which to make that awful descent?
And, if the descent were accomplished, what in the world would we see when we got down there? Gigantic, hitherto unknown fishes? Marine growths, hair animal and half vegetable?
Decidedly, hot rolls and salad, cutlets and baked potatoes, good as they were, could not distract attention from the crowding questions that assailed me. And I could see that Stanley and the Professor were also far away in their thoughts--probably already exploring Penguin Deep.
* * * * *
After lunch we went forward to look at the Professor's gadget, as Stanley insisted on calling it.
It had been carefully unpacked by the crew while we ate, and it shimmered in the electric lighted hold like a great bubble.
It was a giant glass sphere, polished and flawless. Inside it could be made out various objects--a circular bench arrangement on a wooden flooring, batteries that filled the cup between the floor and the bottom arc of the sphere, tall metal cylinders, a small searchlight set next to a mechanism that was indeterminate. At three equidistant points on the sides there were glass handles, as thick as a man's thigh, cast integral with the walls. On the top there was a smaller handle.
At first glance the sphere seemed all in one piece, with the central objects cast inside like a toy ship in a sealed bottle. Then a mathematically precise ring of prismatic reflections showed me that the top third of the ball was a separate piece, fitting conically down like the tapered glass stopper of a monstrous perfume bottle. The handle on the top was for the purpose of lifting this giant's teapot lid, and allowing entrance into the sphere.
"Isn't it a beauty?" murmured Stanley. "It ought to be," he added. "It cost me eighty-six thousand to make it in my own glass factory. Eleven castings before this one came along that was reasonably free of flaws. Twenty-two feet six inches over all, walls five feet thick, new formula unbreakable glass, four men working a month to grind the lid into place, tolerance limits plus or minus zero."
He slapped the Professor's shoulders. "Let's go in and look over the apparatus."
* * * * *
To accommodate the huge ball a well had been constructed in the Rosa's hold. This brought the deck we were standing on up to within six feet of the top ring, above which was rigged a chain hoist for lifting the ponderous lid.
The hoist was revolved, the conical top was swung free, and we clambered into our unique diving shell.
The tall cylinders were revealed as great flasks of compressed air. The indeterminate thing beside the searchlight turned out to be a hand pump, geared to work against heavy pressure. From the suction chamber of this three tubes extended.
"We inhale the air of the chamber," the Professor explained to me, "and exhale through the tubes into the pump cylinder. Breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. The pump piston is forced down by this geared handle, sending the used air out of the shell through this sixteenth-inch hole. A ball check valve keeps the water from squirting in when the exhaust pressure is released."
He pointed to a telegraphic key which completed a circuit from the batteries in the bottom of the ball to a thread of copper cast through the lid.
"That's your plaything, Martin. You are to raise or lower us by pressing that key. It controls the donkey engine electrically, so that we guide our own destinies though we are a mile beneath our power plant. Stanley works the pump. I direct the searchlight, write down notes, and, I sincerely hope, take snapshots of deep sea life."
For a moment my part of the labor seemed so easy as to be unfair. Merely to sit there and punch a little key at raising and lowering time! But as I thought it over it began to appear more difficult.
The Rosa could not anchor, of course, in a mile of water. We would drift helplessly. If we approached an undersea cliff I must raise us at once to prevent us being smashed against it. And if the cliff were too lofty to be cleared in time....
I mentioned this to the Professor.
"That would be unfortunate," he said, with his frosty smile. "Stanley assures us this glass is unbreakable. He means commercially unbreakable. What would happen to it if it were submitted to the strain of being flung against a rock pile--in addition to the enormous stress of the water pressure--I don't know. It's your job to see that we don't have to find out!"
* * * * *
It had been planned to test the sphere empty first to see how it stood the strain.
We drifted to a full stop over the center of Penguin Deep where we were to gamble our lives in a game with Neptune. Sea anchors were rigged to lessen our drift and the donkey engine was geared to the first cable drum.
There was an impressive row of these drums, each holding an interminable length of three-quarter-inch cable. The bulk of a mile of steel cable has to be seen to be believed!
The glass sphere was lifted from the hold, delicately for all its enormous weight, and swung over the rail preparatory to being lowered into the depths.
Not until that moment did I notice two things: that there was no fastening of any kind to keep the thick lid in place: and that the three-quarter-inch cable looked like a pack thread in comparison to the ponderous bulk it strained to support.
"We couldn't use a heavier cable," said the Professor, "because of the strain. We're overloading the hoist as it is. As for the lid being fastened down--I think you'll find it will be pressed into place securely enough!"
There was unanimous silence as the great globe slipped into the sea--down and down until the last reflection of the morning sun ceased to shimmer from its surface. Drum after drum was played out, till the first mate held his hand up to check the engineer.
"Five thousand feet, sir," he called to Stanley.
"Haul it back up. And let us hope," Stanley added fervently, "that we'll find the gadget in one piece."
* * * * *
The engine began to snort rhythmically. Dripping, vibrating, the coils of cable began to crawl back in place on the drums. There was a glint under the surface again as the sunlight reflected on the nearing sphere.
The great ball flashed out of the water, and a cheer burst from the throats of all of us. It was absolutely unharmed. Only--there was a beading of fine moisture inside the thick globe. What that could mean, none of us could figure out.
"Difference in temperature?" worried the Professor. "No, it's as cold inside as out. Molecules of water driven by sheer pressure through five feet of glass to unite in drops on the inside? Possibly. Well, there's one way to find out. Stanley, Martin--are you ready?"
We nodded, and prepared to visit the bottom a mile below the Rosa's keel. The preparation consisted merely in donning heavy, fleece-lined jumpers to protect us from the cold of the sunless depths.
Soberly we entered the ball to undergo whatever ordeal awaited us on the distant ocean floor. How comparative distance is! A mile walk in the country--it is nothing. A mile ascent in an airplane--a trifle. But a mile descent into pitch black, bone chilling depths of water--that is an immense distance!
Copper wire, on a separate drum, was connected from the engine switch to the copper thread that curled through the glass wall to my telegraphic key. We strapped the mouthpieces of the breathing tubes over our heads, and Browne started the slow turning of the compression pump.
The Professor snapped the searchlight on and off several times to see that it was in working shape. He raised his hand, I pressed the key, and the long descent began.
* * * * *
That plunge into the bottomless depths remains in my memory almost as clearly as the far more fantastic adventures that came to us later.
Smoothly, rapidly, the yellow-green of the surface water dimmed to olive. This in turn grew blacker and blacker. Then we were slipping down into pitch darkness--a big bubble lit by a meagre lamp and containing three fragile human beings that dared to trust the soft pulp of their bodies to the crushing weight of the deepest ocean.
The most impressive thing was the utter soundlessness of our descent. At first there had been a pulsing throb of the donkey engine transmitted to us by the sustaining cable. This died as we slid farther from the Rosa. At length it was hushed entirely, cushioned by the springy length of steel. There was no stir, no sound of any kind. As far as our senses could tell us, we were hanging motionless in the pressing, awesome blackness.
The Professor switched off our light and turned on the searchlight which he trained downward through the wall at as steep an angle as the flooring would permit. Even then the illusion of motionlessness was preserved. There was nothing in the water to mark our progress. We might have been floating in a back void of space.
Down and down we went, for an interminable length of time--till at length we reached the abysmal level where the sun never shone and the eyes of man had never gazed till now.
* * * * *
Words were made to describe familiar articles. I find now when I am faced with the necessity of portraying events and objects beyond the range of normal human experience that I cannot conjure up words to fit. I despair of trying to make you see what we saw, and feel what we felt.
But try to picture yourself in the glass ball with us:
All is profound blackness save for a streak of white, dying about fifty feet away, which is the beam of our searchlight. Twenty feet below is a bare floor of flinty lava and broken shell. This is unrelieved by sea-weed of any kind, appearing like an imagined fragment of Martian or lunar landscape.
The ball sways idly to the push of some explicable submarine current. It is like being in a captive balloon, except that the connecting cable extends stiffly upward instead of downward.
There is a realization, an instinctive feel of awful pressure around you. Logic tells you how you are clamped about, but deeper than logic is the intuition that the glass walls are pressing in on themselves--at the point of collapse. Your ears, tingle with the feel of it: your head rings with it.
You are breathing in through your nose--thin, unsatisfying gulps of air that cause your lungs to labor at their task; and you are exhaling through, your mouth, with difficulty, into the barrel of the powerful pump. No bubbles arise from the tiny hole where the used air is forced into the water. The pressure is too enormous for that. Only a thin, milky line marks its escape from the sphere.
In a ghostly way you see Stanley turning the pump handle. With a handful of waste which he has borrowed from the Rosa's engine room, the Professor wipes from the section of wall through which the searchlight plays the moisture that constantly collects there. I sit with my hand near the key, peering downward and ahead like an engineer in a locomotive cab, ready to raise the shell or lower it as occasion warrants.
And always the suffocating awareness of pressure....
* * * * *
Strange and mystic journey as the tortured glass sphere floated over the bottom, following the slow drift of the Rosa far above!
The finger of light played along the tilted side of a wrecked tramp steamer. There was a crumpled gash in the bow. From this ragged hole suddenly appeared a great, serpentine form....
The Professor clutched at his camera, pointed it, and clenched his hands in a frenzy of disappointment. The serpent shape had disappeared back into the hull. A little later and we had drifted slowly past the wreck.
"Damn it!" the Professor snatched away his mouthpiece to exclaim: "If we could only stop."
The bottom changed character shortly after we had passed the hulk. We began to creep over low, gently rounded mounds.
These were so regular in form that they were puzzling. About fifty feet across and ten in altitude, they looked artificial in their symmetry--like great saucers set on the ocean floor bottom side up. They took on a dirty black hue as our light struck them, and glowed with a faint phosphorescence as they stretched away into the darkness.
A twelve-foot monstrosity, all toad-like head and eyes, swam into the light beam and bumped blindly against the glass ball. For an instant it goggled crazily at us. The Professor took its picture. It blundered away. As it reached the darkness beyond the beam it, too, showed phosphorescent. A belt of blue-white spots like the portholes of a liner extended down its ugly sides.
Along the bottom, between the curious mounds, writhed a wormlike thing. But it was too huge to be described as truly wormlike--it was eighteen or twenty feet long and a foot thick. It was blood red, almost blunt ended and patently without eyes.
I took my gaze off it for an instant. When I looked again it had disappeared. I blinked at this seeming miracle and then discovered a foot or so of its tail protruding from under the edge of one of the mounds. It was threshing furiously about.
* * * * *
It was at this instant that I suddenly found increased difficulty, and glanced at Stanley.
He had stopped pumping and was clutching at the Professor's arm with one hand while he pointed down with the other. The Professor motioned him toward the pump, and began to click pictures furiously with the camera pointed at the nearest mound.
Wondering at the urgency of Stanley's gesture and the frantic clicking of the camera shutter, I looked more closely at the curious, saucerlike hump.
Under closer inspection something remarkably like a huge, mud-colored eye was revealed! And as we drifted along, twenty feet away on the farther slope, another appeared!
Paralyzed, I stared at the edges of the thing. They were waving almost imperceptibly up and down, creeping!
The mounds were living creatures! Acres and acres of them lying lethargically on the bottom waiting for something to crawl within range of their monstrous edges!
Involuntarily I pressed the key to raise us. But we had gone only a few feet when the Professor called to me.
"Down again, Martin. I don't think these things will bother us unless we scrape against them. Anyway they can't hurt the shell."
I lowered the ball to our former twenty-foot level, and there we swung just over the monsters' backs.
* * * * *
The Professor had said that the giant inverted saucers would probably not bother us if we did not come in contact with them. It soon became apparent that, in a measure, he was right. The creatures either could not or would not lift their enormous bulks from the sea floor.
A gigantic wriggling thing, all grotesque fringe and tentacles, drifted down into the range of our light. Lower it floated until it hovered just above one of the larger mounds. The Professor got its portrait. At the same instant, as though it had heard the click of the shutter and been frightened by it, the thing dropped another foot--and touched the sloping back.
With the speed of light the inverted saucer became a cup. Like a clenching fist, the cup closed over one of the straggling tentacles.
There followed a tug of war that was all the more ghastly for its soundlessness. The hunted jerked spasmodically to get away from the hunter. So wild were its efforts that several times it raised the monster clear of the bottom for a foot or so. But the grim clutch could not be broken.
Closer and closer it was dragged. Then, after a supreme paroxysm, the tentacle parted and the prey escaped. The tentacle disappeared into the mass of the baffled hunter. It made no attempt to follow the fleeing creature. It slowly relaxed along the bottom and waited for its next meal.
The unearthly incident gave us fresh confidence, convincing us that the monsters did not move unless they were directly touched. Of course we could not foresee the fatal accident that was going to put us within reach of one of the giant saucers.
* * * * *
We thought for awhile that these great blobs of cold life were the largest creatures of the depths. It was soon made clear to us how mistaken that notion was!
For a time we gazed spellbound at the nightmare assortment of grotesqueries that gradually assembled around us, attracted no doubt by our light. The things were mainly sightless and of indescribable shape. Most of them were phosphorescent, and they avoided collisions in a way that suggested that they had some buried sense of light perception.
As time passed the Professor emptied his camera, refilled it several times and groaned that he had no more film. Twice as we drifted along I raised us to keep us clear of a gradual upward slope of the smooth floor.
Stanley removed his mouthpiece long enough to suggest that we go back to the surface: we had been submerged for nearly four hours now. But before we could reply a violent movement was felt.
The ball rocked and twirled so that we were forced to cling to the circular bench to avoid being thrown to the floor. It was as though a hurricane of wind had suddenly penetrated the unruffled depths.
"Earthquake?" called Stanley.
"Don't know," answered the Professor. He swung the searchlight in an arc and focussed it at length on something that appeared only as a field of blurred movement. He wiped the moisture from the wall before the lens, and there was revealed to us a sight that makes my heart pound even now when I recall it to memory.
Something vast and serpentine had ventured too near the bottom--and had been caught by the death traps there!
The creature was a writhing mass of gigantic coils. It was impossible even to guess at its length, but its girth was such that the mound-shaped monsters that had fastened to it could not entirely encircle it.
There it twined and knotted: a mighty serpent of the deepest ocean, snapping its awful length and threshing its powerful tail in an effort to dislodge the giant leeches that were flattened against it. And every time it touched the bottom in its blind frenzy, more of the teeming deathtraps attached themselves to it, crawling over their fellows in an effort to find unoccupied areas.
* * * * *
Soon the sea-serpent was a distorted, creeping mass. For one appalling instant its head came into our view....
It resembled the head of a crocodile, only it was ten times larger and covered with scale like the armor plate of a destroyer. The jaws, wide open and slashing with enormous, needle-shaped teeth at the huge parasites, were large enough to have held our glass sphere. One eye appeared. It was at least three feet across and of a shimmering amethyst color.
One of the deadly saucers wrapped itself around the great head. The entire mass of attackers and attacked settled slowly to the bottom.
But before it completely succumbed the beaten monster gave one last, convulsive flick of its tail....
"Good God!" cried Stanley, shrinking away from the pump and staring upward.
I followed his gaze with my own eyes.
In the faint reflected glow of the searchlight I could see row on row of large cups flattened against the top of the ball. As I watched these flattened still more and the big sphere quivered perceptibly.
In its death struggle the mighty serpent had flicked one of the huge leeches against us. It now clung there with blind tenacity, covering nearly two-thirds of our shell with the underside of its body.
I reached for the control key to send us to the surface.
"Don't!" snapped the Professor. "The weight--"
He needed to say no more. My hand recoiled as though the key had been red hot.
The three-quarter-inch cable above us was now sustaining, in addition to its own huge weight, our massive glass ball and the appalling tonnage of this grim blanket of flesh that encircled us. Could it further hold against the strain of lifting that combined tonnage through the press of the water? Almost certainly it could not!
There was nothing we could do but hang there and discover at first hand exactly what happened to things that were clamped in those mighty, living vises!
* * * * *
The Professor turned on the interior bulb. The result was ghastly. It showed every detail of the belly of the thing that gripped us.
Crowded over its entire under surface were gristly, flattened suckers. Now and then a convulsive ripple ran through its surface tissue and great ridges of flesh stood out. With each squeeze the glass shell quivered ominously as though the extreme limit of its pressure resisting power were being reached--and passed.
"A nice fix," remarked the Professor, his calm, dry voice acting like a tonic in that moment of fear. "If we try to go up, the cable would probably break. If we try to outlast the patience of this thing we might run out of air, or actually be staved in."
He paused thoughtfully.
"I suggest, though, that we follow the latter course for awhile at least. It would be just too bad if that cable broke, gentlemen!"
Stanley shuddered, and looked at the dirty white belly that pressed against the glass walls on all sides.
"I vote we stay here for a time."
"And I," was my addition.
I relieved Stanley at the pump. He and the Professor sat down on the bench. Casting frequent glances at the constricted blanket of flesh that covered us, we prepared to wait as composedly as we might for the thing to give up its effort to smash our shell.
* * * * *
The hour that followed was longer than any full day I have ever lived through. Had I not confirmed the passage of time by looking at my watch, I would have sworn that at least twenty hours had passed.
Every half-minute I gazed at that weaving pattern of cup-shaped suckers only five feet away, trying to see if they were relaxing in their pressure. I attempted to persuade myself that they were. But I knew I was only imagining it. Actually they were pressed as flat as ever, and the sphere still quivered at regular intervals as the heavy body squeezed in on itself. There was no sign that its blind, mindless patience was becoming exhausted.
There was little conversation during that interminable hour.
Stanley grinned wryly once and commented on the creature's disappointment if it actually succeeded in getting at us.
"We'd be scattered all over the surrounding half mile by the pressure of the water," he said. "There'd be nothing left for our pet to feed on but five-foot chunks of broken glass. Not a very satisfying meal."
"We might try to reason with the thing--point out how foolish it is to waste its time on us," I suggested, trying to appear as nonchalant as he was.
The Professor said nothing. He was coolly writing in his notebook, describing minutely the appearance of our abysmal captor.
Finally I chanced to look down through a section of wall not covered by our stubborn enemy. I wiped the moisture from the glass before the searchlight so that I could see more clearly.
* * * * *
The bottom seemed to be heaving up and down. I blinked my eyes and looked again. It was not an illusion. With a regular dip and rise we were approaching to within a few feet of the rocky floor and moving back up again. Also we were floating faster than at anytime previous. The bottom was bare again; we had left the crowding, ominous mounds.
I waved to the Professor. He snapped his notebook shut and stared at the uneasy ocean bottom.
"I've been hoping I was wrong," he said simply. "I thought I felt a wavy motion fifteen minutes ago, and it seemed to me to increase steadily."
The three of us stared at each other.
"You mean ..." began Stanley with a shudder.
"I mean that the Rosa, one mile above us, is having difficulties. A storm. Judging from our movement it must be a hurricane: the length of cable would cushion us from any average wave, and we are rising and falling at least fifteen feet."
"My God!" groaned Stanley. "The Rosa is already heeled with the weight of us. She could never weather a hurricane!"
The plight of the crew above our heads was as clear to us as though we had been aboard with them.
Should they cut the cable, figuring that the lives of the three of us were certainly not to be set against the thirty on the yacht?
Should they disconnect the electric control and try to haul us up regardless?
Or should they try to ride out the storm in spite of being crippled by the drag of us?
"I think if I were up there I'd cut us adrift," said Stanley grimly. Both the Professor and myself nodded. "Though," he added hopefully, "my captain is a good gambler...."
* * * * *
The cable quivered like a live thing under the terrific strain. At each downward swoop, before the upswing began, there was a sickening sag.
"We no longer have a decision to make," said the Professor. "Press the key, Martin, and God grant we can rise with all this dead weight."
And at that instant the crew of the Rosa were also relieved of the necessity for making a decision.
At the bottom of one of those long, sickening falls there was a jerk--and we continued on down to the ocean floor!
The sphere rolled over, jumbling the equipment in a tangled mess with the three of us in the center, bruised and cut. The light snapped off as the battery connections were torn loose.
There we lay at the bottom of Penguin Deep, in an inert sphere that was dead and dark in the surrounding blackness--a coffin of glass to hold us through the centuries....
* * * * *
"Martin," I heard the Professor's voice after a time. "Stanley--can either of you move? I'm caught."
"I'm caught, too," came Stanley's gasping answer. "Something on my leg--feels like it's broken."
A heavy object was pressing across my body. With an effort I freed myself and fumbled in the pitch darkness for the other two.
"Lights first," commanded the Professor. "The pump, you know."
I did know! Frantically I scrambled in the dark till I located the batteries. They were right side up and still wired together.
The air grew rapidly foul with no one at the pump. Panting for breath I blundered at the task of connecting the light. After what seemed an eternity I accomplished it.
The light revealed Stanley with an air tank lying across his leg. The mouthpiece of his breathing tube had been forced back over his head, gashing his face in its journey. His face was white with pain.
The Professor was caught under the heavy bench. I freed him and together we attended to Stanley, finding that his leg wasn't broken but only badly bruised.
The mound-shaped monster, dislodged possibly by the fall, was nowhere to be seen.
I resumed work at the pump, the connections of which were so strongly contrived that they had withstood the shock of the upset.
For a moment we were content to rest while the air grew purer. Then we were forced squarely to face our fate.
* * * * *
The Professor summed up the facts in a few concise words.
"We're certainly doomed! Here at the bottom of Penguin Deep we're as out of reach of help as though we were stranded on the moon. We're as good as dead right now."
"If we have nothing left to hope for," whispered Stanley after a time, "we might as well close the air valves and get it over with at once. No use torturing ourselves...."
The Professor moistened his lips.
"It might be wise." He turned to me. "What's your opinion, Martin?"
But I--I confess I had not the stark courage of these two.
"No! No!" I cried out. "Let's keep on living as long as the air holds out. Something might happen--"
I avoided their eyes as I said it, utterly ashamed of my cowardly quibbling with death. What in the name of God could possibly happen to help us?
The Professor shrugged dully, and nodded.
"I feel with Stanley that we ought to get it over in one short stab. But we have no right to force you...." His voice trailed off.
We readjusted our mouthpieces. I turned automatically at the pump; and we silently awaited the last suffocating moment of our final doom.
* * * * *
As before, attracted by the light, a strange assortment of deep-sea life wriggled and darted about us, swimming lazily among the looped coils and twists of our cable which had settled down around us.
Among these were certain fish that resembled great porcupines. Spines a foot and a half long, like living knife blades, protected them from the attacks of other species.
They were the only things we saw that were not constantly writhing away from the jaws of some hostile monster--the only things that seemed able to swim about their own affairs without even deigning to watch for danger.
Fascinated, I watched the six-foot creatures. Here were we, reasoning humans, supposed lords of creation, slowly but surely perishing--while only a few feet away one of the lowest forms of life could exist in perfect safety and tranquility!
Then, as I watched them, I seemed to see a difference in some of them.
The majority of them had two fins just behind the gill slits, typical fish tails and blunt, sloping heads. But now and then I saw a spined monster that was queerly unlike its fellows.
Instead of two front fins, these unique ones had two vacant round holes. The head looked as though it had forgotten to grow; its place was taken by an eyeless, projecting, shield shaped cap. And there was no tail.
Glad to find something to distract my half crazed thoughts, I studied the nearest of these.
They moved slower than their tailed and finned brothers, I noticed. I wondered how they could move at all, lacking in any kind of motive power as they seemed to be.
Next instant the secret of their movement was made clear!
* * * * *
Out of the empty fin holes of the creature I was studying crept two long, powerful looking tentacles. But these were not true tentacles. There were no vacuum discs on them, and they moved as though supported by jointed bones--like arms.
The arms ended in flat paddles that resembled hands. These threshed the water in a sort of breast-stroke, propelling the body forward.
Shortly after the arms had appeared, the spiny head cap was cautiously extended a few inches forward from the main shell. Further it was extended as the head of a turtle might slowly appear from the protection of its bony case. And under it--
"Professor!" I screamed wildly. "My God! Look!"
Both the Professor and Stanley merely stared dully at me. I babbled of what I had seen.
"A man! A human looking thing, anyway! Arms and a head! A man inside a fish's spined hide--like armor!"
They looked pityingly at me. The Professor laid his hand on my shoulder.
"Now, now," he soothed, "don't go to pieces--"
"I tell you I saw it!" I shouted. Then, shrinking from the hysterical loudness of my own voice, I lowered my tone. "Something that looks human has occupied some of those prickly, six-foot shells. I saw arms--and a man's head! I swear it!"
"Nonsense! How could a human being stand the cold, the pressure--"
Here I happened to glance at the wall of the shell through which the searchlight shone.
"Look! See for yourself!"
* * * * *
Squarely in the rays of the light showed a head, projecting from one of the shells and capped with a wide flat helmet of horned bone.
There were eyes and nose and mouth placed on one side of that head--a face! There were even tabs of flesh or bony protuberances that resembled ears.
"Curious," muttered the Professor, staring. "It certainly looks human enough to talk. But it's only a fish, nevertheless. See--in the throat are gill slits."
"But the eyes! Look at them! They're not the eyes of a fish!"
And they were not. There was in them a light of reason, of intelligence. Those eyes were roaming brightly over us, observing the light, the equipment, seeming to note our amazement as we crowded to look at it.
The sphere rocked slightly. Behind the staring, manlike visitor there was a glimpse of enormous, crocodile jaws and huge, amethyst eyes. Instantly the head and arms receded, leaving an empty-seeming, lifeless shell. An impregnable fortress of spines, the thing drifted slowly away through the twisted loops of cable.
"It certainly looked like--" began Stanley shakily.
"The creature was just a fish," said the Professor shaking his head at the light in Stanley's eyes. "Some sort of giant parasite that inhabits the shells of other fish."
He opened the valve of the last air cylinder and seated himself resignedly on the bench.
"We have another half hour or so--"
All of us suddenly put out our hands to brace ourselves. The sphere had moved.
"Look at the cable!" called Stanley.
We did so. It was moving, writhing away from us over the bottom as though abruptly given life of its own. Coil after coil disappeared into the further gloom.
At length the cable was straight. The ball moved again--was dragged a few feet along the rocky floor.
Something--possessed of incredibly vast power--had seized the end of the steel cable and was reeling us in as a fisherman reels in a trout!
* * * * *
Slowly, unsteadily, we slid along the ocean floor. Ahead of us appeared a jagged black wall--a cliff. There was a gloomy hole at its base. Toward this we were being dragged by whatever it was that had caught the end of the cable.
Helpless, we watched ourselves engulfed by the murky den. In the beam of the searchlight we saw that the submarine cavern extended on and on for an unguessable depth. The cable, taut with the strain, stretched ahead out of sight.
Time had been lost track of during that mysterious, ominous journey. It was recalled to us by the state of the air we were breathing.
The Professor removed his mouthpiece and cast the tube aside.
"You might as well stop pumping, Martin," he said quietly. "We're done. There's no more air in the flask."
We stared at each other. Then we shook hands, solemnly, tremulously, taking leave of each other before we departed on that longest of all journeys....
The air in that small space was rapidly exhausted. We lay on the floor, laboring for breath, and closed our eyes....
The Professor, the oldest of the three of us, succumbed first. I heard his breath whistle stertorously and, glancing at him, saw that he was in a coma. In a moment Stanley had joined him in blessed unconsciousness.
I could feel myself drifting off.... Hammers beat at my ears.... Daggers pierced my heaving lungs....
Hazily I could see scores of the bristly, manlike fish when I opened my eyes and glanced through the walls. It was not one monster then, but many that had brought us to their lair. Abruptly, as though a signal had been given, they all streamed back toward the mouth of the cavern....
My eyesight dimmed.... The hammers pulsed louder.... A veil descended over my senses and I knew no more....
* * * * *
A soft, sustained roar came to my ears. Through my closed eyelids I could sense light. A dank, fishy smell came to my nostrils.
I groaned and moved feebly, finding that I was resting on something soft and pleasant.
Dazedly I opened my eyes and sat up. An exclamation burst from me as I suddenly remembered what had gone before, and realized that somehow, incredibly, I was still living.
Feeling like a man who has waked from a nightmarish sleep to find himself in his tomb, I gazed about.
I was in a long, lofty rock chamber, the uneven floor of which was covered with shallow pools of water. The further end was of smooth-grained stone that resembled cement. The near end was rough like the walls; but in it there was a small, symmetrical arch, the mouth of a passage leading away to some other point in the bowels of the earth.
The place was flooded with clear light that had a rosy tinge. From my position on the floor I could not see what made the light. It streamed from a crevice that extended clear around the cave parallel with the floor and about twelve feet above it. From this groove, along with the light, came the soft roaring hiss.
Beside me was the glass ball, the cover off and lying a few feet away from the opening in the top. There was no trace of Stanley or the Professor.
I rose from my couch, a thick, mattresslike affair of soft, pliant hide, and walked feebly toward the small arch in the near end of the cave.
Even as I approached it I heard footsteps, and voices resounded in some slurring, musical language. Half a dozen figures suddenly came into view.
They were men, as human as myself! Indeed, as I gazed at them, I felt inclined to think they were even more human!
* * * * *
They were magnificent specimens. The smallest could not have been less than six feet three, and all of them were muscular and finely proportioned. Their faces were arresting in their expression of calm strength and kindliness. They looked like gods, arrayed in soft, thick, beautifully tanned hides in this rosy tinted hole a mile below the ocean's top.
They stared at me for an instant, then advanced toward me. My face must have reflected alarm, for the tallest of them held up his hand, palm outward, in a peaceful gesture.
The leader spoke to me. Of course the slurred, melodious syllable meant nothing to me. He smiled and indicated that I was to follow him. I did so, hardly aware of what I was doing, my brain reeling in an attempt to grasp the situation.
How marvelous, how utterly incredible, to find human beings here! How many were there? Where had they come from? How had they salvaged us from Penguin Deep? I gave it up, striding along with my towering guards like a man walking in his sleep.
At length the low passageway ended, and I exclaimed aloud at what I saw.
I was looking down a long avenue of buildings, all three stories in height. There were large door and window apertures, but no doors nor window panes. In front of each house was a small square with--wonder of wonders!--a lawn of whitish yellow vegetation that resembled grass. In some of the lawns were set artistic fountains of carved rock.
I might have been looking down any prosperous earthly subdivision, save for the fact that the roofs of the houses were the earth itself, which the building walls, in addition to functioning as partitions, served to support. Also earthly subdivisions aren't usually illuminated with rosy light that comes softly roaring from jets set in the walls.
* * * * *
We were walking toward a more brightly lighted area that showed ahead of us. On the way we passed intersections where other, similar streets branched geometrically away to right and left. These were smaller than the one we were on, indicating that ours was Main Street in this bizarre submarine city.
Faces appeared at door and window openings to peer at me as we passed. And even in that jumbled moment I had time to realize that these folk could restrain curiosity better than we can atop the earth. There was no hub-bub, no running out to tag after the queerly dressed foreigner and shout humorous remarks at him.
We approached the bright spot I had noticed from afar. It was an open square, about a city block in area, in the center of which was a royal looking building covered with blazing fragments of crystal and so brilliantly resplendent with light that it seemed to glow at the heart of a pink fire.
I was led toward this and in through a wide doorway. As courteously as though I were a visiting king, I was conducted up a great staircase, down a corridor set with more of the sparkling crystals and into a huge, low room. There my escort bowed and left me.
* * * * *
Still feeling that I could not possibly be awake and seeing actual things, I glanced around.
In a corner was another of the mattresslike couches made of the thick, soft hide that seemed to be the principal fabric of the place. A few feet away was a table set with dishes of food in barbaric profusion. None of the viands looked familiar but all appealed to the appetite. The floor was strewn with soft skins, and comfortable, carved benches were scattered about.
I walked to the window and looked out. Underneath was a plot of the cream colored grass through which ran a tiny stream. This widened at intervals into clear pools beside which were set stone benches. A hundred yards away was the edge of the square, where the regular, three storied houses began.
While I was staring at this unearthly vista, still unable to think with any coherence. I heard my name called. I turned to face Stanley and the Professor.
* * * * *
Both were pale in the rose light, and Stanley limped with the pain of his bruised leg: but both had recovered from their partial suffocation as completely as had I.
"We thought perhaps you'd decided to swim back up to the Rosa and leave us to our fates," said Stanley after we had stopped pumping each other's arms and had seated ourselves.
"And I thought--well, I didn't think much of anything," I replied. "I was too busy straining my eyesight over the wonders of this city. Did you ever see anything like it?"
"We haven't seen it at all, save for a view from the windows," said Stanley. "All we know of the place is that a while ago we woke up in a room like this, only much smaller and less lavish. I wonder why you rate this distinction?"
I described the streets as I had seen them. (It is impossible for me to think of them as anything but streets; it would seem as though the rock roof over all would give the appearance of a series of tunnels; but I had always the impression of airiness and openness.)
"Light and heat are furnished by natural gas," said the Professor when I remarked on the perfection of these two necessities. "That's what makes the low roaring noise--the thousands of burning jets. But the presence of gas here isn't as unusual as the presence of air. Where does that come from? Through wandering underground mazes, from some cave mouth in the Fiji Islands to the north? That would indicate that all the earth around here is honeycombed like a gigantic section of sponge. I wonder--"
"Have you any idea how we were rescued?" I interrupted, a little impatient of his abstract scientific ponderings.
"We have," said Stanley. "A woman told us. We woke up to find her nursing us--gorgeous looking thing--finest woman I've ever seen, and I've seen a good many--"
"She didn't exactly 'tell' us," remarked the Professor with his thin smile. Women were only interesting to him as biological studies. "She drew a diagram that explained it.
"That tunnel, Martin, was like the outer diving chamber of a submarine. We were hauled in on a big windlass--driven by gas turbines, I think. Once we were inside, a twenty-yard, counterbalanced wall of rock was lowered across the entrance. Then the water was drained out through a well, and into a subterranean body of water that extends under the entire city. And here we are."
We fell silent. Here we were. But what was going to happen to us among these friendly-seeming people; and how--if ever--we were going to get back to the earth's surface, were questions we could not even try to answer.
* * * * *
We ate of the appetizing food laid out on the long table. Shortly afterward we heard steps in the corridor outside the room.
A woman entered. She was ravishingly beautiful, tall, slender but symmetrically rounded. A soft leather robe slanted upward across her breast to a single shoulder fastening and ended just above her knees in a skirt arrangement. Around her head was a regal circlet of silvery gray metal with a flashing bit of crystal set in the center above her broad, low forehead.
She smiled at Stanley who looked dazzled and smiled eagerly back.
She pointed toward the door, signifying that we were to go with her. We did so; and were led down the great staircase and to a huge room that took up half the ground floor of the building. And here we met the nobility of the little kingdom--the upper class that governed the immaculate little city.
They were standing along the walls, leaving a lane down the center of the room--tall, finely modelled men and women dressed in the single garments of soft leather. There were people there with gray hair and wisdom wrinkled faces; but all were alike in being erect of body, firm of bearing and in splendid health.
They stopped talking as we entered the big room. Our gaze strayed ahead down the lane toward the further wall.
Here was a raised dais. On it was a gleaming crystal encrusted throne. And occupying it was the most queenly, exquisitely beautiful woman I had ever dreamed about.
* * * * *
Woman? She was just a girl in years in spite of her grave and royal air. Her eyes were deep violet. Her hair was black as ebony and gleaming with sudden glints of light. Her skin--
But she cannot be described. Only a great painter could give a hint of her glory. Too, I might truthfully be described as prejudiced about her perfections.
The Queen, for patently she was that, bowed graciously at us. It seemed to me--though I told myself that I was an imaginative fool--that her eyes rested longest on me, and had in them an expression not granted to the Professor or Stanley.
She spoke to us a melodious sentence or two, and waved her beautiful hand in which was a short ivory wand, evidently a scepter.
"She's probably giving us the keys to the city," whispered Stanley. He edged nearer the fair one who had conducted us. "I sincerely hope there's room here for us."
The open lane closed in on us. Men and women crowded about us speaking to us and smiling ruefully as they realized we could not understand. I noticed that, for some curious reason, they seemed fascinated by the color of my hair. Red-haired men were evidently scarce there.
At length the beauty who had so captured Stanley's fancy, and who seemed to have been appointed a sort of mentor for us, suggested in sign language that we might want to return to our quarters.
It was a welcome suggestion. We were done in by the experiences and emotions that had gripped us since leaving the Rosa such an incredibly few hours ago.
We went back to the second floor. I to my luxurious big apartment and Stanley and the Professor to their smaller but equally comfortable rooms.
* * * * *
A pleasant period slid by, every waking hour of which was filled with new experiences.
The city's name, we found, was Zyobor. It was a perfect little community. There were artisans and thinkers, artists and laborers--all alike in being physically perfect beyond belief and cultured as no race on top the ground is cultured.
As we began to learn the language, more exact details of the practical methods of existence were revealed to us.
The surrounding earth furnished them with building materials, metals and unlimited gas. The sea, so near us and yet so securely walled away, gave them food. Which warrants a more detailed description.
We were informed that the manlike, two-armed fishes were the servants of these people--domesticated animals, in a sense, only of an extremely high order of intelligence. They were directed by mental telepathy (Every man, woman and child in Zyobor was skilled at thought projection. They conversed constantly, from end to end of the city, by mental telepathy.)
Protected in their spined shells, which they captured from the schools of porcupine fish that swarmed in Penguin Deep, they gathered sea vegetation from the higher levels and trapped sea creatures. These were brought into the subterranean chamber where our glass ball now reposed. Then the chamber was emptied of water and the food was borne to the city.
The vast army of mound-fish provided the bulk of the population's food, and also furnished the thick, pliant skin they used for clothing and drapes. They were cultivated as we cultivate cattle--an ominous herd, to be handled with care and approached by the fish-servants with due caution.
Thus, with all reasonable wants satisfied, with talent and brains to design beautiful surroundings, lighted and warmed by inexhaustible natural gas, these fortunate beings lived their sheltered lives in their rosy underground world.
At least I thought their lives were sheltered then. It was only later, when talking to the beautiful young Queen, that I learned of the dread menace that had begun to draw near to them just a short time before we were rescued....
* * * * *
My first impression, when we had entered the throne room that first day, that the Queen had regarded me more intently than she had Stanley or the Professor, had been right. It pleased her to treat me as an equal, and to give me more of her time than was granted to any other person in the city.
Every day, for a growing number of hours, we were together in her apartment. She personally instructed me in the language, and such was my desire to talk to this radiant being that I made an apt pupil.
Soon I had progressed enough to converse with her--in a stilted, incorrect way--on all but the most abstract of subjects. It was a fine language. I liked it, as I liked everything else about Zyobor. The upper earth seemed far away and well forgotten.
Her name, I found, was Aga. A beautiful name....
"How did your kingdom begin?" I asked her one day, while we were sitting beside one of the small pools in the gardens. We were close together. Now and then my shoulder touched hers, and she did not draw away.
"I know not," she replied. "It is older than any of our ancient records can say. I am the three hundred and eleventh of the present reigning line."
"And we are the first to enter thy realm from the upper world?"
"Thou art the first."
"There is no other entrance but the sea-way into which we were drawn?"
"There is no other entrance."
* * * * *
I was silent, trying to realize the finality of my residence here.
At the moment I didn't care much if I never got home!
"In the monarchies we know above," I said finally, avoiding her violet eyes, "it is not the custom for the queen--or king--to reign alone. A consort is chosen. Is it not so here? Has thou not, among thy nobles, some one thou hast destined--"
I stopped, feeling that if she dismissed me in anger and never spoke to me again the punishment would be just.
But she wasn't angry. A lovely tide of color stained her cheeks. Her lips parted, and she turned her head. For a long time she said nothing. Then she faced me, with a light in her eyes that sent the blood racing in my veins.
"I have not yet chosen," she murmured. "Mayhap soon I shall tell thee why."
She rose and hurried back toward the palace. But at the door she paused--and smiled at me in a way that had nothing whatever to do with queenship.
* * * * *
As the time sped by the three of us settled into the routine of the city as though we had never known of anything else.
The Professor spent most of his time down by the sea chamber where the food was dragged in by the intelligent servant-fish.
He was in a zoologist's paradise. Not a creature that came in there had ever been catalogued before. He wrote reams of notes on the parchment paper used by the citizens in recording their transactions. Particularly was he interested in the vast, lowly mound-fish.
One time, when I happened to be with him, the receding waters of the chamber disclosed the body of one of the odd herdsmen of these deep sea flocks. Then the Professor's elation knew no bounds. We hurried forward to look at it.
"It is a typical fish," puzzled the Professor when we had cut the body out of its usurped armor. "Cold blooded, adapted to the chill and pressure of the deeps. There are the gills I observed before ... yet it looks very human."
It surely did. There were the jointed arms, and the rudimentary hands. Its forehead was domed; and the brain, when dissected, proved much larger than the brain of a true fish. Also its bones were not those of a mammal, but the cartilagenous bones of a fish. It was not quite six feet long; just fitted the horny shell.
"But its intelligence!" fretted the Professor, glorying in his inability to classify this marvelous specimen. "No fish could ever attain such mental development. Evolution working backward from human to reptile and then fish--or a new freak of evolution whereby a fish on a short cut toward becoming human?" He sighed and gave it up. But more reams of notes were written.
"Why do you take them?" I asked. "No one but yourself will ever see them."
* * * * *
He looked at me with professorial absent-mindedness.
"I take them for the fun of it, principally. But perhaps, sometime, we may figure out a way of getting them up. My God! Wouldn't my learned brother scientists be set in an uproar!"
He bent to his observations and dissections again, cursing now and then at the distortion suffered by the specimens when they were released from the deep sea pressure and swelled and burst in the atmospheric pressure in the cave.
Stanley was engrossed in a different way. Since the moment he laid eyes on her, he had belonged to the stately woman who had first nursed him back to consciousness. Mayis was her name.
From shepherding the three of us around Zyobor and explaining its marvels to us, she had taken to exclusive tutorship of Stanley. And Stanley fairly ate it up.
"You, the notorious woman hater," I taunted him one time, "the wary bachelor--to fall at last. And for a woman of another world--almost of another planet! I'm amazed!"
"I don't know why you should be amazed," said he stiffly.
"You've been telling me ever since I was a kid that women were all useless, all alike--"
"I find I was mistaken," he interrupted. "They aren't all alike. There's only one Mayis. She is--different."
"What do you talk about all the time? You're with her constantly."
"I'm not with her any more than you're with the Queen," he shot back at me. "What do you find to talk about?"
That shut me up. He went to look for Mayis; and I wandered to the royal apartments in search of Aga.
* * * * *
In the first days of our friendship I had several times surprised in Aga's eyes a curious expression, one that seemed compounded of despair, horror and resignation.
I had seen that same expression in the eyes of the nobles of late, and in the faces of all the people I encountered in the streets--who, I mustn't forget to add here, never failed to treat me with a deference that was as intoxicating as it was inexplicable.
It was as though some terrible fate hovered over the populace, some dreadful doom about which nothing could be done. No one put into words any fears that might confirm that impression; but continually I got the idea that everybody there went about in a state of attempting to live normally and happily while life was still left--before some awful, wholesale death descended on them.
At last, from Aga, I learned the fateful reason.
But first--a confession that was hastened by the knowledge of the fate of the city--I learned from her something that changed all of life for me.
* * * * *
We were surrounded by the luxury of her private apartment. We sat on a low divan, side by side. I wanted, more than anything I had ever wanted before, to put my arms around her. But I dared not. One does not make love easily to a queen, the three hundred and eleventh of a proud line.
And then, as maids have done often in all countries, and, perhaps, on all planets, she took the initiative herself.
"We have a curious custom in Zyobor of which I have not yet told thee," she murmured. "It concerns the kings of Zyobor. The color of their hair."
She glanced up at my own carrot-top, and then averted her gaze.
"For all of our history our kings have had--red hair. On the few occasions when the line has been reduced to a lone queen, as in my case, the red-haired men of the kingdom have striven together in public combat to determine which was most powerful and brave. The winner became the Queen's consort."
"And in this case?" I asked, my heart beginning to pound madly.
"In my case, my lord, there is to be no--no striving. When I was a child our only two red-haired males died, one by accident, one by sickness. Now there are none others but infants, none of eligible age. But--by a miracle--thou--"
She stopped; then gazed up at me from under long, gold flecked lashes.
"I was afraid ... I was doomed to die ... alone...."
* * * * *
It was after I had replied impetuously to this, that she told me of the terror that was about to engulf all life in the beautiful undersea city.
"Thou hast wonder, perhaps, why I should be forward enough to tell thee this instead of waiting for thine own confession first," she faltered. "Know, then--the reason is the shortness of the time we are fated to spend together. We shall belong each to the other only a little while. Then shall we belong to death! And I--when I knew the time was to be so brief--"
And I listened with growing horror to her account of the enemy that was advancing toward us with every passing moment.
* * * * *
About twenty miles away, in the lowest depression of Penguin Deep, lived a race of monsters which the people of Aga's city called Quabos.
The Quabos were grim beings that were more intelligent than Aga's fish-servants--even, she thought, more intelligent than humans themselves. They had existed in their dark hole, as far as the Zyobites knew, from the beginning of time.
Through the countless centuries they had constructed for themselves a vast series of dens in the rock. There they had hidden away from the deep-sea dangers. They, too, preyed on the mound-fish; but as there was plenty of food for all, the Zyobites had never paid much attention to them.
But--just before we had appeared, there had come about a subterranean quake that changed the entire complexion of matters in Penguin Deep.
The earthquake wiped out the elaborately burrowed sea tunnels of the Quabos, killing half of them at a blow and driving the rest out into the unfriendly openness of the deep.
Now this was fatal to them. They were not used to physical self defense. During the thousands of years of residence in their sheltered burrows they had become utterly unable to exist when exposed to the primeval dangers of the sea. It was as though the civilization-softened citizens of New York should suddenly be set down in a howling wilderness with nothing but their bare hands with which to contrive all the necessities of a living.
* * * * *
Such was the situation at the time Stanley, the Professor and myself arrived in Zyobor.
The Quabos must find an immediate haven or perish. On the ocean bottom they were threatened by the mound-fish. In the higher levels they were in danger from almost everything that swam: few things were so defenceless as themselves after their long inertia.
Their answer was Zyobor. There, in perfect security, only to be reached by the diving chamber that could be sealed at will by the twenty-yard, counterbalanced lock, the Quabos would be even more protected than in their former runways.
So--they were working day and night to invade Aga's city!
"But Aga," I interrupted impulsively at this point. "If these monsters are fishes, how could they live here in air--"
I stopped as my objection answered itself before she could reply.
They would not have to live in air to inhabit Zyobor. They would inundate the city--flood that peaceful, beautiful place with the awful pressure of the lowest depths!
That thought, in turn, suggested to me that every building in Zyobor would be swept flat if subjected suddenly to the rush of the sea. The great low cavern, without the support of the myriad walls, would probably collapse--trapping the invading Quabos and leaving the rest without a home once more.
But Aga answered this before I could voice it.
The Quabos had foreseen that point. They were tunneling slowly but surely toward the city from a point about half a mile from the diving chamber. And as they advanced, they blocked up the passageway behind them at intervals, drilled down to the great underground sea that lay beneath all this section, and drained a little of the water away.
* * * * *
In this manner they lightened, bit by bit, the enormous weight of the ocean depths. When the city was finally reached, not only would it be ensured against sudden destruction but the Quabos themselves would have become accustomed to the difference in pressure. Had they gone immediately from the accustomed press of Penguin Deep into the atmosphere of Zyobor, they would have burst into bits. As it was they would be able to flood the city slowly, without injury to themselves.
"Now thou knowest our fate," concluded Aga with a shudder. "Zyobor will be a part of the great waters. We ourselves shall be food for these monsters...." She faltered and stopped.
"But this cannot be!" I exclaimed, clenching my fists impotently. "There must be something we can do; some way--"
"There is nothing to be done. Our wisest men have set themselves sleeplessly to the task of defence. There it no defence possible."
"We can't simply sit here and wait! Your people are wonderful, but this is no time for resignation. Send for my two friends, Aga. We will have a council of war, we four, and see if we can find a way!"
She shrugged despairfully, started to speak, then sent in quest of Stanley and the Professor.
* * * * *
They as well as myself, had had no idea of the menace that crept nearer us with each passing hour. They were dumbfounded, horrified to learn of the peril. We sat awhile in silence, realizing our situation to the full.
Then the Professor spoke:
"If only we could see what these things look like! It might help in planning to defeat them."
"That can be done with ease," said Aga. "Come."
We went with her to the gardens and approached the nearest pool.
"My fish-men are watching the Quabos constantly. They report to me by telepathy whenever I send my thoughts their way. I will let you see, on the pool, the things they are now seeing."
She stared intently at the sheet of water. And gradually, as we watched, a picture appeared--a picture that will never fade from my memory in any smallest detail.
The Quabos had huddled for protection into a large cave at the foot of the cliff outside Zyobor. There were a great many Quabos, and the cave was relatively confining. Now we saw, through the eyes of the spine protected outpost of the Queen, these monstrous refugees crowded together like sheep.
The watery cavern was a creeping mass of viscous tentacles, enormous staring eyes and globular heads. The cave was paved three deep with the horrible things, and they were attached to the it walls and roof in solid blocks.
"My God!" whispered Stanley. "There are thousands of them!"
* * * * *
There were. And that they were in distress was evident.
The layers on the floor were weaving and shifting constantly as the bottom creatures struggled feebly to rise to the top of the mass and be relieved of the weight of their brothers. Also they were famished....
One of the blood red, gigantic worms floated near the cave entrance. Like lightning the nearest Quabos darted after it. In a moment the prey was torn to bits by the ravenous monsters.
The other side of the story was immediately portrayed to us.
With the emerging of the reckless Quabos, a sea-serpent appeared from above and snapped up three of their number. Evidently the huge serpent considered them succulent tidbits, and made it its business to wait near the cave and avail itself of just such rash chance-taking as this.
While we watched the nightmare scene, a Quabo disengaged itself from the parent mass and floated upward into the clear, giving us a chance to see more distinctly what the creatures looked like.
There was a black, shiny head as large as a sugar barrel. In this were eyes the size of dinner plates, and gleaming with a cold, hellish intelligence. Four long, twining tentacles were attached directly to the head. Dotted along these were rudimentary sucker discs, that had evidently become atrophied by the soft living of thousands of the creature's ancestors.
As though emerging from the pool into which we were gazing, the monster darted viciously at us. At once it disappeared: the fish-servant through whose eyes we were seeing all this had evidently retreated from the approach; although, protected by its spines, it could not have been in actual danger.
"How dost thou know of the tunneling?" I asked Aga. "Thy fish-men cannot be present there, in the rear of the tunnel, to report."
"My artisans have knowledge of each forward move," she answered. "I will show thee."
* * * * *
We walked back to the palace and descended to a smooth-lined vault. There we saw a great stone shaft sunk down into the rock of the floor. On this was a delicate vibration recording instrument of some sort, with a needle that quivered rhythmically over several degrees of an arc.
"This tells of each move of the Quabos," said Aga. "It also tells us where they will break through the city wall. How near to us are they, Kilor?" she asked an attendant who was studying the dial, and who had bowed respectfully to Aga and myself as we approached.
"They will break into the city in four rixas at the present rate of advance, Your Majesty."
Four rixas! In a little over sixteen days, as we count time, the city of Zyobor would be delivered into the hands--or, rather, tentacles--of the slimy, starving demons that huddled in the cavern outside!
Somberly we followed Aga back to her apartment.
* * * * *
"As thou seest," she murmured, "there is nothing to be done. We can only resign ourselves to the fate that nears us, and enjoy as much as may be the few remaining rixas...."
She glanced at me.
The Professor's dry, cool voice cut across our wordless, engrossed communion.
"I don't think we'll give up quite as easily as all that. We can at least try to outwit our enemies. If it does nothing else for us, the effort can serve to distract our minds."
He drew from his pocket a sheet of parchment and the stub of his last remaining pencil. His fingers busied themselves apparently idly in the tracing of geometric lines.
"Looking ahead to the exact details of our destruction," he mused coolly, "we see that our most direct and ominous enemy is the sea itself. When the city is flooded, we drown--and later the Quabos can enter at will."
He drew a few more lines, and marked a cross at a point in the outer rim of the diagram.
"What will happen? The Quabos force through the last shell of the city wall. The water from their tunnel floods into Zyobor. But--and mark me well--only the water from the tunnel! The outer end, remember, is blocked off in their pressure-reducing process. The vast body of the sea itself cannot immediately be let in here because the Quabos must take as long a time to re-accustom themselves to its pressure as they did to work out of it."
He spread the parchment sheet before us.
"Is this a roughly accurate plan of the city?" he asked Aga.
She inclined her lovely head.
"And this," indicating the cross, "is the spot where the Quabos will break in?"
Again she nodded, shuddering.
"Then tell me what you think of this," said the Professor.
* * * * *
And he proceeded to sketch out a plan so simple, and yet so seemingly efficient, that the rest of us gazed at him with wordless admiration.
"My friend, my friend," whispered Aga at last, "thou hast saved us. Thou art the guardian hero of Zyobor--"
"Not too fast, Your Highness," interrupted the Professor with his frosty smile. "I shall be much surprised if this little scheme actually saves the city. We may find the rock so thick there that our task is hopeless--though I imagine the Quabos picked a thin section for help in their own plans."
A vague look came into his eyes.
"I must certainly get my hands on one of these monsters ... superhumanly intelligent fish ... marvelous--akin to the octopus, perhaps?"
He wandered off, changed from the resourceful schemer to the dreamy man of scientific abstractions.
The Queen gazed after him with wonder in her eyes.
"A great man," she murmured, "but is he--a little mad?"
"No, only a little absent-minded," I replied. Then, "Come on, Stanley. We'll round up every able bodied citizen in Zyobor and get to work. I suppose they have some kind of rock drilling machinery here?"
They had. And they strangely resembled our own rock drills: revolving metal shafts, driven by gas turbines, tipped with fragments of the same crystal that glittered so profusely in the palace walls. Another proof that practically every basic, badly needed tool had been invented again and again, in all lands and times, as the necessity for it arose.
With hundreds of the powerful men of Zyobor working as closely together as they could without cramping each others movements, and with the whole city resounding to the roar of the machinery, we labored at the defence that might possibly check the advance of the hideous Quabos.
And with every breath we drew, waking or sleeping, we realized that the cold blooded, inhuman invaders had crept a fraction of an inch closer in their tunneling.
The Quabos against the Zyobites! Fish against man! Two diametrically opposed species of life in a struggle to the death! Which of us would survive?
* * * * *
The hour of the struggle approached. Every soul in Zyobor moved in a daze, with strained face and fear haunted eyes. Their proficiency in mental telepathy was a curse to them now: every one carried constantly, transmitted from the brains of the servant-fish outposts, a thought picture of that outer cavern in the murky depths of which writhed the thousands of crowding Quabos. Each mind in Zyobor was in continual torment.
Spared that trouble, at least, Stanley and the Professor and I walked down to the fortification we had so hastily contrived. It was finished. And none too soon: the vibration indicator in the palace vault told us that only two feet of rock separated us from the burrowing monsters!
The Professor's scheme had been to cut a long slot down through the rock floor of the city to the roof of the vast, mysterious body of water below.
This slot was placed directly in front of the spot in the city wall where the Quabos were about to emerge. As they forced through the last shell of rock, the deluge of water, instead of drowning the city, was supposed to drain down the oblong vent. Any Quabos that were too near the tunnel entrance would be swept down too.
* * * * *
In silence we approached the edge of the great trough and stared down.
There was a stratum of black granite, fortunately only about thirty feet thick at this point, and then--the depths! A low roar reached our ears from far, far beneath us. A steady blast of ice cold air fanned up against us.
The Professor threw down a large fragment of rock. Seconds elapsed and we heard no splash. The unseen surface was too far below for the noise of the rock's fall to carry on up to us.
"The mystery of this ball of earth on which we live!" murmured the Professor. "Here is this enormous underground body of water. We are far below sea level. Where, then, is it flowing? What does it empty into? Can it be that our planet is honeycombed with such hollows as this we are in? And is each inhabited by some form of life?"
He sighed and shook his head.
"The thought is too big! For, if that were true, wouldn't the seas be drained from the surface of the earth should an accidental passage be formed from the ocean bed down to such a giant river as this beneath us? How little we know!"
* * * * *
The wild clamor of an alarm bell interrupted his musing. From all the city houses poured masses of people, to form in solid lines behind the large well.
In addition to men, there were many women in those lines, tall and strong, ready to stand by their mates as long as life was left them. There were children, too, scarcely in their teens, prepared to fight for the existence of the race. Every able-bodied Zyobite was mustered against the cold-blooded Things that pressed so near.
The arms of these desperate fighters were pitiful compared to our own war weapons. With no need in the city for fighting engines, none had ever been developed. Now the best that could be had was a sort of ax, used for dissecting the mound-fish, and various knives fashioned for peaceful purposes.
Again the bell clamored forth a warning, this time twice repeated. Every hand grasped its weapon. Every eye went hopefully to the hole in the floor on which our immediate fate depended, then valiantly to the section of wall above it.
This quivered perceptibly. A heavy, pointed instrument broke through; was withdrawn; and a hissing stream of water spurted out.
The Quabos were about to break in upon us!
* * * * *
With a crash that made the solid rock tremble, a section of the wall collapsed. It was the top half of the end of the Quabos' tunnel. They had so wrought that the lower half stayed in place--a thing we did not have time to recognize as significant until later.
A solid wall of water, in which writhed dozens of tentacled monsters, was upon us, and we had time for nothing but action.
The ditch had of necessity been placed directly under the Quabos' entrance. The first rush of water carried half over it. With it were borne scores of the cold-blooded invaders.
In an instant we were standing knee deep in a torrent that tore at our footing, while we hacked frantically with knives and axes at the slimy tentacles that reached up to drag us under.
A soft, horrible mass swept against my legs. I was overthrown. A tentacle slithered around my neck and constricted viciously like a length of rotten cable. I sawed at it with the long, notched blade I carried. Choking for air, I felt the pressure relax and scrambled to my knees.
Two more tentacles went around me, one winding about my legs and the other crushing my waist. Two huge eyes glared fiendishly at me.
I plunged the knife again and again into the barrel-shaped head. It did not bleed: a few drops of thin, yellowish liquid oozed from the wounds but aside from this my slashing seemed to make no impression.
In a frenzy I defended myself against the nightmare head that was winding surely toward me. Meanwhile I devoted every energy to keeping on my feet. If I ever went under again--
It seemed to me that the creature was weakening. With redoubled fury I hacked at the spidery shape. And gradually, when it seemed as though I could not withstand its weight and crushing tentacles another second, it slipped away and floated off on the shallow, roaring rapids.
* * * * *
For a moment I stood there, catching my breath and regaining my strength. Shifting, terrible scenes flashed before my eyes.
A tall Zyobite and an almost equally stalwart woman were both caught by one gigantic Quabo which had a tentacle around the throat of each. The man and woman were chopping at the viscous, gruesome head. One of the Thing's eyes was gashed across, giving it a fearsome, blind appearance. It heaved convulsively, and the three struggling figures toppled into the water and were swirled away.
The Professor was almost buried by a Quabo that had all four of its tentacles wound about him. As methodically as though he were in a laboratory dissecting room, he was cutting the slippery lengths away, one by one, till the fourth parted and left him free.
A giant Zyobite was struggling with two of the monsters. He had an ax in each hand, and was whirling them with such strength and rapidity that they formed flashing circles of light over his head. But he was torn down at last and borne off by the almost undiminished flood that gushed from the tunnel.
And now, without warning, a heavy soft body flung against my back, and the accident most to be dreaded in that mêlée occurred.
I was knocked off my feet! My head was pressed under the water. On my chest was a mass that was yielding but immovable, soft but terribly strong. Animated, firm jelly! I had no chance to use my knife. My arms were held powerless against my sides.
Water filled my nose and mouth. I strangled for breath, heaving at the implacable weight that pinned me helpless. Bright spots swirled before my eyes. There was a roaring in my ears. My lungs felt as though filled with molten lead. I was drowning....
* * * * *
Vaguely I felt the pressure loosen at last. An arm--with good, solid flesh and bone in it--slipped under my shoulders and dragged me up into the air.
"Don't you know--can't drown a fish--holding it under water?" panted a voice.
I opened my eyes and saw Stanley, his face pale with the thrill of battle, his chin jutting forward in a berserk line, his eyes snapping with eager, wary fires.
I grinned up at him and he slapped me on the back--almost completing the choking process started by the salt water I'd inhaled.
"That's better. Now--at it again!"
I don't remember the rest of the tumult. The air seemed filled with loathsome tentacles and bright metal blades. It was a confused eternity until the decreased volume of water in the tunnel gave us a respite....
As the tunnel slowly emptied the pressure dropped, and the incoming flood poured squarely into the trough instead of half over it. From that moment there was very little more for us to do.
Our little army--with about a fourth of its number gone--had only to guard the ditch and see that none of the Quabos caught the edges as they hurtled out of their passage.
For perhaps ten minutes longer the water poured from the break in the wall, with now and then a doomed Quabo that goggled horribly at us as it was dashed down the hole in the floor to whatever awesome depths were beneath.
Then the flow ceased. The last oleaginous corpse was pushed over the edge. And the city, save for an ankle-deep sheet of water that was rapidly draining out the vents in the streets, presented its former appearance.
The Zyobites leaned wearily against convenient walls and began telling themselves how fortunate they were to have been spared what seemed certain destruction.
* * * * *
The Professor didn't share in the general feeling of triumph.
"Don't be so childishly optimistic!" he snapped as I began to congratulate him on the victory his ditch had given us. "Our troubles aren't over yet!"
"But we've proved that we can stand up to them in a hand-to-tentacle fight--"
His thin, frosty smile appeared.
"One of those devils, normally, is stronger than any three men. The only reason all of us weren't destroyed at once is that they were slowly suffocating as they fought. The foot and a half of water we were in wasn't enough to let their gills function properly. Now if they were able to stand right up to us and not be handicapped by lack of water to breathe ... I wonder.... Is that part of their plan? Is there any way they could manage ...?"
"But, Professor," I argued, "it's all over, isn't it? The tunnel is emptied, and all the Quabos are--"
"The tunnel isn't emptied. It's only half emptied! I'll show you."
He called Stanley; and the three of us went to the break.
"See," the Professor pointed out to us as we approached the jagged hole, "the Quabos only drilled through the top half of their tunnel ending. That means that the tunnel still has about four feet of water in it--enough to accommodate a great many of the monsters. There may be four or five hundred of them left in there; possibly more. We can expect renewed hostilities at any time!"
"But won't it be just a repetition of the first battle?" remonstrated Stanley. "In the end they'll be killed or will drown for lack of water as these first ones did."
* * * * *
The Professor shook his head.
"They're too clever to do that twice. The very fact that they kept half their number in reserve shows that they have some new trick to try. Otherwise they'd all have come at once in one supreme effort."
He paced back and forth.
"They're ingenious, intelligent. They're fighting for their very existence. They must have figured out some way of breathing in air, some way of attacking us on a more even basis in case that first rush went wrong. What can it be?"
"I think you're borrowing trouble before it is necessary--" I began, smiling at his elaborate, scientific pessimism. But I was interrupted by a startled shout from Stanley.
"Professor Martin," he cried, pointing to the tunnel mouth. "Look!"
Like twin snakes crawling up to sun themselves, two tentacles had appeared over the rock rim. They hooked over the edge; and leisurely, with grim surety of invulnerability, the barrel-like head of a Quabo balanced itself on the ledge and glared at us.
* * * * *
For a moment we stared, paralyzed, at the Thing. And, during that moment it squatted there, as undistressed as though the air were its natural element, its gills flapping slowly up and down supplying it with oxygen.
The thing that held us rooted to the spot with fearful amazement was the fantastic device that permitted it to be almost as much at home in air as in water.
Over the great, globular head was set an oval glass shell. This was filled with water. A flexible metal tube hung down from the rear. Evidently it carried a constant stream of fresh water. As we gazed we saw intermittent trickles emerging from the bottom of the crystalline case.
Point for point the creature's equipment was the same as diving equipment used by men, only it was exactly opposite in function. A helmet that enabled a fish to breathe in air, instead of a helmet to allow a man to breathe in water!
Stanley was the first of us to recover from the shock of this spectacle. He faced about and raised his voice in shouts of warning to the resting Zyobites. For other glass encased monsters had appeared beside the first, now.
One by one, in single file like a line of enormous marching insects, they crawled down the wall and humped along on their tentacles--around the ditch and toward us!
* * * * *
The deadly infallibility of that second attack!
The Quabos advanced on us like armored tanks bearing down on defenceless savages. Their glass helmets, in addition to containing water for their breathing, protected them from our knives and axes. We were utterly helpless against them.
They marched in ranks about twenty yards apart, each rank helping the one in front to carry the cumbersome water-hoses which trailed back to the central water supply in the tunnel.
Their movements were slow, weighted down as they were by the great glass helmets, but they were appallingly sure.
We could not even retard their advance, let alone stop it. Here were no suffocating, faltering creatures. Here were beings possessed of their full vigor, each one equal to three of us even as the Professor had conjectured. Their only weak points were their tentacles which trailed outside the glass cases. But these they kept coiled close, so that to reach them and hack at them we had to step within range of their terrific clutches.
The Zyobites fought with the valor of despair added to their inherent noble bravery. Man after man closed with the monstrous, armored Things--only to be seized and crushed by the weaving tentacles.
Occasionally a terrific blow with an ax would crack one of the glass helmets. Then the denuded Quabo would flounder convulsively in the air till it drowned. But there were all too few of these individual victories. The main body of the Quabos, rank on rank, dragging their water-hose behind them, came on with the steadiness of a machine.
* * * * *
Slowly we were driven back down the broad street and toward the palace. As we retreated, old people and children came from the houses and went with us, leaving their dwellings to the mercy of the monsters.
A block from the palace we bunched together and, by sheer mass and ferocity, actually stopped the machinelike advance for a few moments. Miscellaneous weapons had been brought from the houses--sledges, stone benches, anything that might break the Quabos' helmets--and handed to us in silence by the noncombatants.
Somebody tugged at my sleeve. Looking down I saw a little girl. She had dragged a heavy metal bar out to the fray and was trying to get some fighter's attention and give it to him.
I seized the formidable weapon and jumped at the nearest Quabo, a ten-foot giant whose eyes were glinting gigantically at me through the distorting curve of the glass.
Disregarding the clutching tentacles entirely, I swung the bar against the helmet. It cracked. I swung again and it fell in fragments, spilling the gallons of water it had contained.
The tentacles wound vengefully around me, but in a few seconds they relaxed as the thing gasped out its life in the air.
* * * * *
I turned to repeat the process on another if I could, and found myself facing the Queen. Her head was held bravely high, though the violet of her eyes had gone almost black with fear and repulsion of the terrible things we fought.
"Aga!" I cried. "Why art thou here! Go back to the palace at once!"
"I came to fight beside thee," she answered composedly, though her delicate lips quivered. "All is lost, it seems. So shall I die beside thee."
I started to reply, to urge her again to seek the safety of the palace. But by now the deadly advance of the tentacled demons had begun once more.
Fighting vainly, the population of Zyobor was swept into the palace grounds, then into the building itself.
Men, women and children huddled shoulder to shoulder in the cramping quarters. An ironic picture came to me of the crowding masses of Quabos stuffed into the protection of the outer cave, waiting the outcome of the fight being waged by their warriors. Here were we in a similar circumstance, waiting for the battle to be decided. Though there was little doubt in the minds of any of us as to what the outcome would be.
Guards, the strongest men of the city, were stationed with sledges at the doors and windows. The Quabos, able only to enter one at a time, halted a moment and there was a badly needed breathing spell.
* * * * *
"We've got to find some drastic means of defence," said the Professor, "or we won't last another three hours."
"If you asked me, I'd say we couldn't last another three hours anyway," replied Stanley with a shrug. "These fish have out-thought us!"
"Nonsense! There may still be a way--"
"A brace of machine-guns...." I murmured hopefully.
"You might as well wish for a dozen light cannon!" snapped the Professor. "Please try to concentrate, and see if any effective weapon suggests itself to you--something more available at the moment than machine-guns."
In silence the three of us racked our brains for a means of defence. Aga, leaving for a time the task of soothing her more hysterical subjects, came quietly over to us and sat on the bench beside me.
Frankly I could think of nothing. To my mind we were surely doomed. What arms could possibly be contrived at such short notice? What weapon could be called forth to be effective against the thick glass helmets?
But as I glanced at Stanley I saw his face set in a new expression as his thoughts took a turn that suggested possible salvation.
"Glass," he muttered. "Glass. What destroys it? Sharp blows ... certain acids ... variation in temperature ... heat and cold.... That's it! That's it!"
He turned excitedly to the Queen.
"I think we have it! At least it's worth trying. If there is any tubing around...." He stopped as he realized he was talking in English, and resumed stiltedly in Aga's own language.
"Hast thou, in the palace, any lengths of pipe like to that which the Quabos drag behind them?"
"No ..." Aga began, her eyes round and wondering. Then she interrupted herself. "Ah, yes! There is! In a vault near that of Kilor's there is a great spool of it. He had it fashioned to carry air for one of his experiments--"
"Come along!" cried Stanley. "I'll explain what I have in mind while we dig up this coil of hose."
* * * * *
A score of Zyobite workmen were gathered at once. The length of hose--made of some linen-like fabric of tough, shredded sea-weed and covered with a flexible metal sheath--was cut into three pieces each about fifty yards long. These were connected to three of the largest gas vents of the palace.
Stanley, the Professor and I each took an end. And we prepared to fight, with fire, the creatures of water.
"It ought to work," Stanley, repeated several times as though trying to reassure himself as well as us. "It's simple enough: the water in those helmets is ice cold: if fire is suddenly squirted against them they'll crack with the uneven expansion."
"Unless," retorted the Professor, "their glass has some special heat and cold resisting quality."
Stanley shrugged.
"It may well have some such properties. How such creatures can make glass at all is beyond me!"
Dragging our hose to the big front entrance of the palace, and warning the crowded people to keep their feet clear of it, we prepared to test out the efficiency of this, our last resource against the enemy.
* * * * *
For an instant we paused just inside the doorway, looking out at the ugly, glassed-in Things that were massing to attack us again.
The ranks of Quabos had closed in now, till they extended down the street for several hundred yards in close formation--a forest of great pulpy heads with huge eyes that glared unblinkingly at the glittering, pink building that was their objective.
"Light up!" ordered Stanley, setting an example by touching his hose nozzle to the nearest wall jet. A spurt of fire belched from his hose, streaming out for four or five feet in a solid red cone. The Professor and I touched off our torches; and we moved slowly out the door toward the ranks of Quabos.
"Don't try to save yourselves from their tentacles," advised Stanley. "Walk right up to them, direct the fire against their helmets, and damn the consequences. If they grip too hard you can always play the torch on their tentacles till they think better of it."
The Quabos' front line humped grimly toward us, unblinking eyes glaring, tentacles writhing warily, little spurts of used water trickling from their helmets.
"Keep together," warned Stanley, "so that if any one of us loses his light he can get it from the hose of one of the other two. And--Here they come!"
There was no more time for commands. The Quabos in front, supplied with slack in their hoses by those behind, leaped at us with incredible agility. We fell back a step so that none should get at our backs.
The last stand was begun.
* * * * *
It was not a battle so much as a series of fierce duels. The Quabos realized their new danger instantly, and devoted all their efforts to extinguishing our torches. We parried and thrust with the flaming hoses in an equally desperate effort to prevent it.
One of them scuttled toward me like a great crab. A tentacle darted toward my right arm. Another was pressed against the nozzle. There was a sickening smell--and the tentacle was jerked spasmodically away.
I caught the hose in my left hand and turned the fiery jet against the water-filled helmet.
A shout of savage exultation broke from my lips. Hardly, had the flame touched the glass before it cracked! There was a report like a pistol shot--and a miniature Niagara of water and splintered glass poured at my feet!
The tentacle around my arm tightened, then relaxed. The monster shuddered in a convulsive heap on the ground.
I went toward the next one, swinging the flaring hose in a slow arc as I advanced. The creature lunged at me and threshed at the burning jet with all four of its feelers. But it had been exposed to the air for a long time now. The ghastly tentacles were dry; withered and soft. A touch of the fire seared them unmercifully.
Nevertheless with a swift move it slapped a tentacle squarely down over the hose nozzle. The flame was extinguished as the flame of a candle is pinched out between thumb and forefinger. I retreated.
"Catch!" came a voice behind me.
* * * * *
The Professor swung his four-foot jet my way. I held my hose to it, and the flame burst out again. A touch at my grisly antagonist's helmet--a sharp crack--the welcome rush of water over the cream-colored grass--and another monster was writhing in the death throes!
Keeping close together, the three of us faced the massed Quabos in the palace grounds. Again and again the fiery weapon of one or the other of us was dashed out--to be re-lighted from the nearest hose. Again and again loud detonations heralded the collapse of more of the invaders.
But it seemed as though their flailing tentacles were as myriad as the stars they had never seen. It seemed as though their numbers would never appreciably diminish. We thrust and parried till our arms grew numb. And still there appeared to be hundreds of the Quabos left.
By order of the Queen three stout Zyobites stepped up to us and relieved us of our exhausting labor. Gladly we handed the hoses to them and went to the palace for a much needed rest.
* * * * *
Two more shifts of fighters took the flaming jets before the monsters began the retreat slowly back toward their tunnel. And here the Professor took command again.
"We mustn't let them get away to try some new scheme!" he snapped. "Martin, take fifty men and beat them back to the break in the wall. Go around a side street. They move so slowly that you can easily cut off their retreat."
"There isn't any more hose--" began Stanley.
"There's plenty of it. The Quabos brought it with them." The Professor turned to me again. "Take metal-saws with you. Cut sections of the Quabos water-hose and connect them to the nearest wall jets. Run!"
I ran, with fifty of the men of Zyobor close behind me. We dodged out the side of the palace grounds least guarded by the Quabos, ducking between their ranks like infantry men threading through an opposition of powerful but slow-moving tanks. Four of our number were caught, but the rest got through unscathed.
Down a side street we raced, and along a parallel avenue toward the tunnel. As we went I prayed that all the Quabos had centered their attention on the palace and left their vulnerable water-hoses unguarded.
They had! When we stole up the last block toward the break we found the nearest Quabo was a hundred yards down the street--and working further away with every move.
At once we set to work on the scores of hoses that quivered over the floor with each move of the distant monsters.
* * * * *
A Zyobite with the muscles of a Hercules swung his ax mightily down on a hose. The metal was soft enough to be sheered through by the stroke. The cut ends were smashed so that they could not be crammed down over the tapering jets; but we could use our metal-saws for cleaner severances at the other ends.
The giant with the ax stepped from hose to hose. Lengths were completed with the saws. A man was placed at each jet to hold the connections in position. Before the Quabos had reached us we had rigged six fire-hoses and had cut through forty or fifty more water-lines.
The end was certain and not long in coming.
We sprayed the monsters with fire as workmen spray fruit trees with insect poison. Stanley, the Professor and a Zyobite came up in the rear with their three hoses.
Caught between the two forces, the beaten fish milled in hopeless confusion and indecision.
In half an hour they were all reduced to huddles of slimy wet flesh that dotted the pavement from the break back to the palace grounds. The invaders were completely annihilated--and the city of Zyobor was saved!
"Now," said the Professor triumphantly, "we have only to knock out the bottom half of the tunnel wall, empty the tunnel and make sure there are no more Quabos lurking there. After that we can fill it in with solid cement. The Queen can order her fish-servants to guard the outer cave and see that no food gets in to the starving monsters there. The war is over, gentlemen. The Quabos are as good as exterminated at this moment. And I can get back to my zoological work...."
Stanley and I looked at each other. We knew each others thoughts well enough.
He could resume his companionship with the beautiful Mayis. And I--I had Aga....
* * * * *
With the menace of the Quabos banished forever, the city of Zyobor resumed its normal way.
The citizens lowered their dead into the great well we had cut, with appropriate rites performed by the Queen. The daily tasks and pleasures were picked up where they had been dropped. The haunting fear died from the eyes of the people.
Shortly afterward, with great ceremony and celebration, I was made King of Zyobor, to rule by Aga's side. Stanley took Mayis for his wife. He is second to me in power. The Professor is the official wise man of the city.
Life flows smoothly for us in this pink lighted community. We are more than content with our lot here. Our only concern has been the grief that must have been occasioned our relatives and friends when the Rosa sailed home without us.
Now we have thought of a way in which, with luck, we may communicate with the upper world. By relays of my Queen's fish-servants we believe we can send up the Professor's invaluable notes[A] and this informal account of what has happened since we left San Francisco that....
(Editor's note: There was no trace of any "notes." The yacht, Rosa, was reported lost with all hands in a hurricane off New Zealand. Aboard her were a Professor George Berry and the owner, Stanley Browne. There is no record, however, of any passenger by the name of Martin Grey. To date no one has taken this document seriously enough to consider financing an expedition of investigation to Penguin Deep.)
THE GIFT BEARER
By CHARLES L. FONTENAY
This could well have been Montcalm's greatest opportunity; a chance to bring mankind priceless gifts from worlds beyond. But Montcalm was a solid family man--and what about that nude statue in the park?
It was one of those rare strokes of poetic something-or-other that the whole business occurred the morning after the stormy meeting of the Traskmore censorship board.
Like the good general he was, Richard J. Montcalm had foreseen trouble at this meeting, for it was the boldest invasion yet into the territory of evil and laxity. His forces were marshaled. Several of the town's ministers who had been with him on other issues had balked on this one, but he had three of them present, as well as heads of several women's clubs.
As he had anticipated, the irresponsible liberals were present to do battle, headed by red-haired Patrick Levitt.
"This board," said Levitt in his strong, sarcastic voice, "has gone too far. It was all right to get rid of the actual filth ... and everyone will agree there was some. But when you banned the sale of some magazines and books because they had racy covers or because the contents were a little too sophisticated to suit the taste of members of this board ... well, you can carry protection of our youth to the point of insulting the intelligence of adults who have a right to read what they want to."
"You're talking about something that's already in the past, Mr. Levitt," said Montcalm mildly. "Let's keep to the issue at hand. You won't deny that children see this indecent statue every day?"
"No, I won't deny it!" snapped Levitt. "Why shouldn't they see it? They can see the plate of the original in the encyclopaedia. It's a fine copy of a work of art."
Montcalm waited for some rebuttal from his supporters, but none was forthcoming. On this matter, they apparently were unwilling to go farther than the moral backing of their presence.
"I do not consider the statue of a naked woman art, even if it is called 'Dawn,'" he said bitingly. He looked at his two colleagues and received their nods of acquiescence. He ruled: "The statue must be removed from the park and from public view."
Levitt had one parting shot.
"Would it solve the board's problem if we put a brassiere and panties on the statue?" he demanded.
"Mr. Levitt's levity is not amusing. The board has ruled," said Montcalm coldly, arising to signify the end of the meeting.
* * * * *
That night Montcalm slept the satisfied sleep of the just.
He awoke shortly after dawn to find a strange, utterly beautiful naked woman in his bedroom. For a bemused instant Montcalm thought the statue of Dawn in the park had come to haunt him. His mouth fell open but he was unable to speak.
"Take me to your President," said the naked woman musically, with an accent that could have been Martian.
Mrs. Montcalm awoke.
"What's that? What is it, Richard?" she asked sleepily.
"Don't look, Millie!" exclaimed Montcalm, clapping a hand over her eyes.
"Nonsense!" she snapped, pushing his hand aside and sitting up. She gasped and her eyes went wide, and in an instinctive, unreasonable reaction she clutched the covers up around her own nightgowned bosom.
"Who are you, young woman?" demanded Montcalm indignantly. "How did you get in here?"
"I am a visitor from what you would call an alien planet," she said. "Of course," she added thoughtfully, "it isn't alien to me."
"The woman's mad," said Montcalm to his wife. A warning noise sounded in the adjoining bedroom. Alarmed, he instructed: "Go and keep the children out of here until I can get her to put on some clothes. They mustn't see her like this."
Mrs. Montcalm got out of bed, but she gave her husband a searching glance.
"Are you sure I can trust you in here with her?" she asked.
"Millie!" exclaimed Montcalm sternly, shocked. She dropped her eyes and left the room. When the door closed behind her, he turned to the strange woman and said:
"Now, look, young lady, I'll get you one of Millie's dresses. You'll have to get some clothes on and leave."
"Aren't you going to ask me my name?" asked the woman. "Of course, it's unpronounceable to you, but I thought that was the first thing all Earth people asked of visitors from other planets."
"All right," he said in exasperation. "What's your name?"
She said an unpronounceable word and added: "You may call me Liz."
* * * * *
Montcalm went to the closet and found one of Millie's house dresses. He held it out to her beseechingly.
As he did so, he was stricken with a sudden sharp feeling of regret that she must don it. Her figure ... why Millie had never had a figure like that! At once, he felt ashamed and disloyal and sterner than ever.
Liz rejected the proffered garment.
"I wouldn't think of adopting your alien custom of wearing clothing," she said sweetly.
"Now look," said Montcalm, "I don't know whether you're drunk or crazy, but you're going to have to put something on and get out of here before I call the police."
"I anticipated doubt," said Liz. "I'm prepared to prove my identity."
With the words, the two of them were no longer standing in the Montcalm bedroom, but in a broad expanse of green fields and woodland, unmarred by any habitation. Montcalm didn't recognize the spot, but it looked vaguely like it might be somewhere in the northern part of the state.
Montcalm was dismayed to find that he was as naked as his companion!
"Oh, my Lord!" he exclaimed, trying to cover himself with a September Morn pose.
"Oh, I'm sorry," apologized Liz, and instantly Montcalm's pajamas were lying at his feet. He got into them hurriedly.
"How did we get here?" he asked, his astonished curiosity overcoming his disapproval of this immodest woman.
"By a mode of transportation common to my people in planetary atmospheres," she answered. "It's one of the things I propose to teach your people."
She sat down cross-legged on the grass. Montcalm averted his eyes, like the gentleman he was.
"You see," said Liz, "the people of your world are on the verge of going to space and joining the community of worlds. It's only natural the rest of us should wish to help you. We have a good many things to give you, to help you control the elements and natural conditions of your world. The weather, for example ..."
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small cloud appeared above them and spread, blocking out the early sun. It began to rain, hard.
The rain stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the cloud dissipated. Montcalm stood shivering in his soaked pajamas and Liz got to her feet, her skin glistening with moisture.
"You have a problem raising food for your population in some areas," she said....
A small haw-apple tree near them suddenly began to grow at an amazing rate of speed. It doubled its size in three minutes, put forth fruit and dropped it to the ground.
"These are only a few of the things I'll give to your planet," she said.
At her words, they were back in the bedroom. This time she had been thoughtful. Montcalm was still clad in wet pajamas.
"I don't know what sort of hypnosis this is," he began aggressively, "but you can't fool me, young lady, into believing ..."
* * * * *
Millie came into the room. She had donned a robe over her nightgown.
"Richard, where have you been with this woman?" she demanded.
"Why, my dear ..."
"You've been roaming around the house somewhere with her. I came in here a moment ago and you were gone. Now, Richard, I want you to do something about her and stop fooling around. I can't keep the children in their room all day."
It hadn't been hypnosis then! Liz was for real. A vision rose before Montcalm of mankind given wonders, powers, benefits representing advances of thousands of years. The world could become a paradise with the things she offered to teach.
"Millie, this woman is from another planet!" he exclaimed excitedly, and turned to Liz. "Why did you choose me to contact on Earth?"
"Why, I happened to land near your house," she answered. "I know how your primitive social organization is set up, but isn't one human being just as good as another to lead me to the proper authorities?"
"Yes," he said joyfully, visualizing black headlines and his picture in the papers.
Millie stood to one side, puzzled and grim at once. Montcalm picked up the house dress he had taken from the closet earlier.
"Now, Miss," he said, "if you'll just put this on, I'll take you to the mayor and he can get in touch with Washington at once."
"I told you," said Liz, "I don't want to adopt your custom of wearing clothing."
"But you can't go out in public like that!" said the dismayed Montcalm. "If you're going to move among Earth people, you must dress as we do."
"My people wouldn't demand that Earth people disrobe to associate with us," she countered reasonably.
Millie had had enough. She went into action.
"You can argue with this hussy all you like, Richard, but I'm going to call the police," she said, and left the room with determination in her eye.
The next fifteen minutes were agonizing for Montcalm as he tried futilely to get Liz to dress like a decent person. He was torn between realization of what the things she offered would mean to the world and his own sense of the fitness of things. His children, the children of Traskmore, the children of the world ... what would be the effect on their tender morals to realize that a sane adult was willing to walk around in brazen nakedness?
There was a pounding on the front door, and the voice of Millie inviting the law into the house.
"Now I'm afraid you're due to go to jail," said Montcalm mournfully. "But when they get some clothes on you, I'll try to explain it and get you an audience with the mayor."
Two blue-clad policemen entered the room.
One policeman took the house dress from Montcalm's lax fingers and tossed it over Liz' head without further ado.
Liz did not struggle. She looked at Montcalm with a quizzical expression.
"I'm sorry," she said. "My people made a mistake. If you Earth people aren't tolerant enough to accept a difference in customs of dress, I'm afraid you're too immature."
With that, she was gone like a puff of air. The astonished policemen held an empty dress.
Montcalm didn't see the flying saucer that whizzed over Traskmore that morning and disappeared into the sky, but he didn't doubt the reports. He debated with himself for a long time whether he had taken the right attitude, but decided he had.
After all, there were the children to consider.
THE END
EXILE
BY H. B. FYFE
The Dome of Eyes made it almost impossible for Terrans to reach the world of Tepokt. For those who did land there, there was no returning--only the bitterness of respect--and justice!
The Tepoktan student, whose blue robe in George Kinton's opinion clashed with the dull purple of his scales, twiddled a three-clawed hand for attention. Kinton nodded to him from his place on the dais before the group.
"Then you can give us no precise count of the stars in the galaxy, George?"
Kinton smiled wrily, and ran a wrinkled hand through his graying hair. In the clicking Tepoktan speech, his name came out more like "Chortch."
Questions like this had been put to him often during the ten years since his rocket had hurtled through the meteorite belt and down to the surface of Tepokt, leaving him the only survivor. Barred off as they were from venturing into space, the highly civilized Tepoktans constantly displayed the curiosity of dreamers in matters related to the universe. Because of the veil of meteorites and satellite fragments whirling about their planet, their astronomers had acquired torturous skills but only scraps of real knowledge.
"As I believe I mentioned in some of my recorded lectures," Kinton answered in their language, "the number is actually as vast as it seems to those of you peering through the Dome of Eyes. The scientists of my race have not yet encountered any beings capable of estimating the total."
He leaned back and scanned the faces of his interviewers, faces that would have been oddly humanoid were it not for the elongated snouts and pointed, sharp-toothed jaws. The average Tepoktan was slightly under Kinton's height of five-feet-ten, with a long, supple trunk. Under the robes their scholars affected, the shortness of their two bowed legs was not obvious; but the sight of the short, thick arms carried high before their chests still left Kinton with a feeling of misproportion.
He should be used to it after ten years, he thought, but even the reds or purples of the scales or the big teeth seemed more natural.
"I sympathize with your curiosity," he added. "It is a marvel that your scientists have managed to measure the distances of so many stars."
He could tell that they were pleased by his admiration, and wondered yet again why any little show of approval by him was so eagerly received. Even though he was the first stellar visitor in their recorded history, Kinton remained conscious of the fact that in many fields he was unable to offer the Tepoktans any new ideas. In one or two ways, he believed, no Terran could teach their experts anything.
"Then will you tell us, George, more about the problems of your first space explorers?" came another question.
* * * * *
Before Kinton had formed his answer, the golden curtains at the rear of the austerely simple chamber parted. Klaft, the Tepoktan serving the current year as Kinton's chief aide, hurried toward the dais. The twenty-odd members of the group fell silent on their polished stone benches, turning their pointed visages to follow Klaft's progress.
The aide reached Kinton and bent to hiss and cluck into the latter's ear in what he presumably considered an undertone. The Terran laboriously spelled out the message inscribed on the limp, satiny paper held before his eyes. Then he rose and took one step toward the waiting group.
"I regret I shall have to conclude this discussion," he announced. "I am informed that another ship from space has reached the surface of Tepokt. My presence is requested in case the crew are of my own planet."
Klaft excitedly skipped down to lead the way up the aisle, but Kinton hesitated. Those in the audience were scholars or officials to whom attendance at one of Kinton's limited number of personal lectures was awarded as an honor.
They would hardly learn anything from him directly that was not available in recordings made over the course of years. The Tepoktan scientists, historians, and philosophers had respectfully but eagerly gathered every crumb of information Kinton knowingly had to offer--and some he thought he had forgotten. Still ... he sensed the disappointment at his announcement.
"I shall arrange for you to await my return here in town," Kinton said, and there were murmurs of pleasure.
Later, aboard the jet helicopter that was basically like those Kinton remembered using on Terra twenty light years away, he shook his head at Klaft's respectful protest.
"But George! It was enough that they were present when you received the news. They can talk about that the rest of their lives! You must not waste your strength on these people who come out of curiosity."
Kinton smiled at his aide's earnest concern. Then he turned to look out the window as he recalled the shadow that underlay such remonstrances. He estimated that he was about forty-eight now, as nearly as he could tell from the somewhat longer revolutions of Tepokt. The time would come when he would age and die. Whose wishes would then prevail?
Maybe he was wrong, he thought. Maybe he shouldn't stand in the way of their biologists and surgeons. But he'd rather be buried, even if that left them with only what he could tell them about the human body.
* * * * *
To help himself forget the rather preoccupied manner in which some of the Tepoktan scientists occasionally eyed him, he peered down at the big dam of the hydro-electric project being completed to Kinton's design. Power from this would soon light the town built to house the staff of scientists, students, and workers assigned to the institute organized about the person of Kinton.
Now, there was an example of their willingness to repay him for whatever help he had been, he reflected. They hadn't needed that for themselves.
In some ways, compared to those of Terra, the industries of Tepokt were underdeveloped. In the first place, the population was smaller and had different standards of luxury. In the second, a certain lack of drive resulted from the inability to break out into interplanetary space. Kinton had been inexplicably lucky to have reached the surface even in a battered hulk. The shell of meteorites was at least a hundred miles thick and constantly shifting.
"We do not know if they have always been meteorites," the Tepoktans had told Kinton, "or whether part of them come from a destroyed satellite; but our observers have proved mathematically that no direct path through them may be predicted more than a very short while in advance."
Kinton turned away from the window as he caught the glint of Tepokt's sun upon the hull of the spaceship they had also built for him. Perhaps ... would it be fair to encourage the newcomer to attempt the barrier?
For ten years, Kinton had failed to work up any strong desire to try it. The Tepoktans called the ever-shifting lights the Dome of Eyes, after a myth in which each tiny satellite bright enough to be visible was supposed to watch over a single individual on the surface. Like their brothers on Terra, the native astronomers could trace their science back to a form of astrology; and Kinton often told them jokingly that he felt no urge to risk a physical encounter with his own personal Eye.
* * * * *
The helicopter started to descend, and Kinton remembered that the city named in his message was only about twenty miles from his home. The brief twilight of Tepokt was passing by the time he set foot on the landing field, and he paused to look up.
The brighter stars visible from this part of the planet twinkled back at him, and he knew that each was being scrutinized by some amateur or professional astronomer. Before an hour had elapsed, most of them would be obscured by the tiny moonlets, some of which could already be seen. These could easily be mistaken for stars or the other five planets of the system, but in a short while the tinier ones in groups would cause a celestial haze resembling a miniature Milky Way.
Klaft, who had descended first, leaving the pilot to bring up the rear, noticed Kinton's pause.
"Glory glitters till it is known for a curse," he remarked, quoting a Tepoktan proverb often applied by the disgruntled scientists to the Dome of Eyes.
Kinton observed, however, that his aide also stared upward for a long moment. The Tepoktans loved speculating about the unsolvable. They had even founded clubs to argue whether two satellites had been destroyed or only one.
Half a dozen officials hastened up to escort the party to the vehicle awaiting Kinton. Klaft succeeded in quieting the lesser members of the delegation so that Kinton was able to learn a few facts about the new arrival. The crash had been several hundred miles away, but someone had thought of the hospital in this city which was known to have a doctor rating as an expert in human physiology. The survivor--only one occupant of the wreck, alive or dead, had been discovered--had accordingly been flown here.
With a clanging of bells, the little convoy of ground cars drew up in front of the hospital. A way was made through the chittering crowd around the entrance. Within a few minutes, Kinton found himself looking down at a pallet upon which lay another Terran.
A man! he thought, then curled a lip wrily at the sudden, unexpected pang of disappointment. Well, he hadn't realized until then what he was really hoping for!
* * * * *
The spaceman had been cleaned up and bandaged by the native medicos. Kinton saw that his left thigh was probably broken. Other dressings suggested cracked ribs and lacerations on the head and shoulders. The man was dark-haired but pale of skin, with a jutting chin and a nose that had been flattened in some earlier mishap. The flaring set of his ears somehow emphasized an overall leanness. Even in sleep, his mouth was thin and hard.
"Thrown across the controls after his belt broke loose?" Kinton guessed.
"I bow to your wisdom, George," said the plump Tepoktan doctor who appeared to be in charge.
Kinton could not remember him, but everyone on the planet addressed the Terran by the sound they fondly thought to be his first name.
"This is Doctor Chuxolkhee," murmured Klaft.
Kinton made the accepted gesture of greeting with one hand and said, "You seem to have treated him very expertly."
Chuxolkhee ruffled the scales around his neck with pleasure.
"I have studied Terran physiology," he admitted complacently. "From your records and drawings, of course, George, for I have not yet had the good fortune to visit you."
"We must arrange a visit soon," said Kinton. "Klaft will--"
He broke off at the sound from the patient.
"A Terran!" mumbled the injured man.
He shook his head dazedly, tried to sit up, and subsided with a groan.
Why, he looked scared when he saw me, thought Kinton.
"You're all right now," he said soothingly. "It's all over and you're in good hands. I gather there were no other survivors of the crash?"
The man stared curiously. Kinton realized that his own language sputtered clumsily from his lips after ten years. He tried again.
"My name is George Kinton. I don't blame you if I'm hard to understand. You see, I've been here ten years without ever having another Terran to speak to."
The spaceman considered that for a few breaths, then seemed to relax.
"Al Birken," he introduced himself laconically. "Ten years?"
"A little over," confirmed Kinton. "It's extremely unusual that anything gets through to the surface, let alone a spaceship. What happened to you?"
* * * * *
Birken's stare was suspicious.
"Then you ain't heard about the new colonies? Naw--you musta come here when all the planets were open."
"We had a small settlement on the second planet," Kinton told him. "You mean there are new Terran colonies?"
"Yeah. Jet-hoppers spreadin' all over the other five. None of the land-hungry poops figured a way to set down here, though, or they'd be creepin' around this planet too."
"How did you happen to do it? Run out of fuel?"
The other eyed him for a few seconds before dropping his gaze. Kinton was struck with sudden doubt. The outposts of civilization were followed by less desirable developments as a general rule--prisons, for instance. He resolved to be wary of the visitor.
"Ya might say I was explorin'," Birken replied at last. "That's why I come alone. Didn't want nobody else hurt if I didn't make it. Say, how bad am I banged up?"
Kinton realized guiltily that the man should be resting. He had lost track of the moments he had wasted in talk while the others with him stood attentively about.
He questioned the doctor briefly and relayed the information that Birken's leg was broken but that the other injuries were not serious.
"They'll fix you up," he assured the spaceman. "They're quite good at it, even if the sight of one does make you think a little of an iguana. Rest up, now; and I'll come back again when you're feeling better."
For the next three weeks, Kinton flew back and forth from his own town nearly every day. He felt that he should not neglect the few meetings which were the only way he could repay the Tepoktans for all they did for him. On the other hand, the chance to see and talk with one of his own kind drew him like a magnet to the hospital.
The doctors operated upon Birken's leg, inserting a metal rod inside the bone by a method they had known before Kinton described it. The new arrival expected to be able to walk, with care, almost any day; although the pin would have to be removed after the bone had healed. Meanwhile, Birken seemed eager to learn all Kinton could tell him about the planet, Tepokt.
About himself, he was remarkably reticent. Kinton worried about this.
"I think we should not expect too much of this Terran," he warned Klaft uneasily. "You, too, have citizens who do not always obey, your laws, who sometimes ... that is--"
"Who are born to die under the axe, as we say," interrupted Klaft, as if to ease the concern plain on Kinton's face. "In other words, criminals. You suspect this Albirken is such a one, George?"
"It is not impossible," admitted Kinton unhappily. "He will tell me little about himself. It may be that he was caught in Tepokt's gravity while fleeing from justice."
To himself, he wished he had not told Birken about the spaceship. He didn't think the man exactly believed his explanation of why there was no use taking off in it.
* * * * *
Yet he continued to spend as much time as he could visiting the other man. Then, as his helicopter landed at the city airport one gray dawn, the news reached him.
"The other Terran has gone," Klaft reported, turning from the breathless messenger as Kinton followed him from the machine.
"Gone? Where did they take him?"
Klaft looked uneasy, embarrassed. Kinton repeated his question, wondering about the group of armed police on hand.
"In the night," Klaft hissed and clucked, "when none would think to watch him, they tell me ... and quite rightly, I think--"
"Get on with it, Klaft! Please!"
"In the night, then, Albirken left the chamber in which he lay. He can walk some now, you know, because of Dr. Chuxolkhee's metal pin. He--he stole a ground car and is gone."
"He did?" Kinton had an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Is it known where he went? I mean ... he has been curious to see some of Tepokt. Perhaps--"
He stopped, his own words braying in his ears. Klaft was clicking two claws together, a sign of emphatic disagreement.
"Albirken," he said, "was soon followed by three police constables in another vehicle. They found him heading in the direction of our town."
"Why did he say he was traveling that way?" asked Kinton, thinking to himself of the spaceship! Was the man crazy?
"He did not say," answered Klaft expressionlessly. "Taking them by surprise, he killed two of the constables and injured the third before fleeing with one of their spears."
"What?"
Kinton felt his eyes bulging with dismay.
"Yes, for they carried only the short spears of their authority, not expecting to need fire weapons."
* * * * *
Kinton looked from him to the messenger, noticing for the first time that the latter was an under-officer of police. He shook his head distractedly. It appeared that his suspicions concerning Birken had been only too accurate.
Why was it one like him who got through? he asked himself in silent anguish. After ten years. The Tepoktans had been thinking well of Terrans, but now--
He did not worry about his own position. That was well enough established, whether or not he could again hold up his head before the purple-scaled people who had been so generous to him.
Even if they had been aroused to a rage by the killing, Kinton told himself, he would not have been concerned about himself. He had reached a fairly ripe age for a spaceman. In fact, he had already enjoyed a decade of borrowed time.
But they were more civilized than that wanton murderer, he realized.
He straightened up, forcing back his early-morning weariness.
"We must get into the air immediately," he told Klaft. "Perhaps we may see him before he reaches--"
He broke off at the word "spaceship" but he noticed a reserved expression on Klaft's pointed face. His aide had probably reached a conclusion similar to his own.
They climbed back into the cabin and Klaft gave brisk orders to the lean young pilot. A moment later, Kinton saw the ground outside drop away.
Only upon turning around did he realize that two armed Tepoktans had materialized in time to follow Klaft inside.
One was a constable but the other he recognized for an officer of some rank. Both wore slung across their chests weapons resembling long-barreled pistols with large, oddly indented butts to fit Tepoktan claws. The constable, in addition, carried a contraption with a quadruple tube for launching tiny rockets no thicker than Kinton's thumb. These, he knew, were loaded with an explosive worthy of respect on any planet he had heard of.
To protect him, he wondered. Or to get Birken?
The pilot headed the craft back toward Kinton's town in the brightening sky of early day. Long before the buildings of Kinton's institute came into view, they received a radio message about Birken.
"He has been seen on the road passing the dam," Klaft reported soberly after having been called to the pilot's compartment. "He stopped to demand fuel from some maintenance workers, but they had been warned and fled."
"Couldn't they have seized him?" demanded Kinton, his tone sharp with the worry he endeavored to control. "He has that spear, I suppose; but he is only one and injured."
Klaft hesitated.
"Well, couldn't they?"
The aide looked away, out one of the windows at some sun-dyed clouds ranging from pink to orange. He grimaced and clicked his showy teeth uncomfortably.
"Perhaps they thought you might be offended, George," he answered at last.
Kinton settled back in the seat especially padded to fit the contours of his Terran body, and stared silently at the partition behind the pilot.
In other words, he thought, he was responsible for Birken, who was a Terran, one of his own kind. Maybe they really didn't want to risk hurting his feelings, but that was only part of it. They were leaving it up to him to handle what they considered his private affair.
He wondered what to do. He had no actual faith in the idea that Birken was delirious, or acting under any influence but that of a criminally self-centered nature.
"I shouldn't have told him about the ship!" Kinton muttered, gnawing the knuckle of his left thumb. "He's on the run, all right. Probably scared the colonial authorities will trail him right down through the Dome of Eyes. Wonder what he did?"
He caught himself and looked around to see if he had been overheard. Klaft and the police officers peered from their respective windows, in calculated withdrawal. Kinton, disturbed, tried to remember whether he had spoken in Terran or Tepoktan.
Would Birken listen if he tried reasoning, he asked himself. Maybe if he showed the man how they had proved the unpredictability of openings through the shifting Dome of Eyes--
An exclamation from the constable drew his attention. He rose, and room was made for him at the opposite window.
* * * * *
In the distance, beyond the town landing field they were now approaching, Kinton saw a halted ground car. Across the plain which was colored a yellowish tan by a short, grass-like growth, a lone figure plodded toward the upthrust bulk of the spaceship that had never flown.
"Never mind landing at the town!" snapped Kinton. "Go directly out to the ship!"
Klaft relayed the command to the pilot. The helicopter swept in a descending curve across the plain toward the gleaming hull.
As they passed the man below, Birken looked up. He continued to limp along at a brisk pace with the aid of what looked like a short spear.
"Go down!" Kinton ordered.
The pilot landed about a hundred yards from the spaceship. By the time his passengers had alighted, however, Birken had drawn level with them, about fifty feet away.
"Birken!" shouted Kinton. "Where do you think you're going?"
Seeing that no one ran after him, Birken slowed his pace, but kept walking toward the ship. He watched them over his shoulder.
"Sorry, Kinton," he shouted with no noticeable tone of regret. "I figure I better travel on for my health."
"It's not so damn healthy up there!" called Kinton. "I told you how there's no clear path--"
"Yeah, yeah, you told me. That don't mean I gotta believe it."
"Wait! Don't you think they tried sending unmanned rockets up? Every one was struck and exploded."
Birken showed no more change of expression than if the other had commented on the weather.
Kinton had stepped forward six or eight paces, irritated despite his anxiety at the way Birken persisted in drifting before him.
Kinton couldn't just grab him--bad leg or not, he could probably break the older man in two.
He glanced back at the Tepoktans beside the helicopter, Klaft, the pilot, the officer, the constable with the rocket weapon.
They stood quietly, looking back at him.
The call for help that had risen to his lips died there.
"Not their party," he muttered. He turned again to Birken, who still retreated toward the ship. "But he'll only get himself killed and destroy the ship! Or if some miracle gets him through, that's worse! He's nothing to turn loose on a civilized colony again."
* * * * *
A twinge of shame tugged down the corners of his mouth as he realized that keeping Birken here would also expose a highly cultured people to an unscrupulous criminal who had already committed murder the very first time he had been crossed.
"Birken!" he shouted. "For the last time! Do you want me to send them to drag you back here?"
Birken stopped at that. He regarded the motionless Tepoktans with a derisive sneer.
"They don't look too eager to me," he taunted.
Kinton growled a Tepoktan expression the meaning of which he had deduced after hearing it used by the dam workers.
He whirled to run toward the helicopter. Hardly had he taken two steps, however, when he saw startled changes in the carefully blank looks of his escort. The constable half raised his heavy weapon, and Klaft sprang forward with a hissing cry.
By the time Kinton's aging muscles obeyed his impulse to sidestep, the spear had already hurtled past. It had missed him by an error of over six feet.
He felt his face flushing with sudden anger. Birken was running as best he could toward the spaceship, and had covered nearly half the distance.
Kinton ran at the Tepoktans, brushing aside the concerned Klaft. He snatched the heavy weapon from the surprised constable.
He turned and raised it to his chest. Because of the shortness of Tepoktan arms, the launcher was constructed so that the butt rested against the chest with the sighting loops before the eyes. The little rocket tubes were above head height, to prevent the handler's catching the blast.
The circles of the sights weaved and danced about the running figure. Kinton realized to his surprise that the effort of seizing the weapon had him panting. Or was it the fright at having a spear thrown at him? He decided that Birken had not come close enough for that, and wondered if he was afraid of his own impending action.
It wasn't fair, he complained to himself. The poor slob only had a spear, and a man couldn't blame him for wanting to get back to his own sort. He was limping ... hurt ... how could they expect him to realize--?
Then, abruptly, his lips tightened to a thin line. The sights steadied on Birken as the latter approached the foot of the ladder leading to the entrance port of the spaceship.
Kinton pressed the firing stud.
Across the hundred-yard space streaked four flaring little projectiles. Kinton, without exactly seeing each, was aware of the general lines of flight diverging gradually to bracket the figure of Birken.
One struck the ground beside the man just as he set one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder, and skittered away past one fin of the ship before exploding. Two others burst against the hull, scattering metal fragments, and another puffed on the upright of the ladder just above Birken's head.
* * * * *
The spaceman was blown back from the ladder. He balanced on his heels for a moment with outstretched fingers reaching toward the grips from which they had been torn. Then he crumpled into a limp huddle on the yellowing turf.
Kinton sighed.
The constable took the weapon from him, reloaded deftly, and proffered it again. When the Terran did not reach for it, the officer held out a clawed hand to receive it. He gestured silently, and the constable trotted across the intervening ground to bend over Birken.
"He is dead," said Klaft when the constable straightened up with a curt wave.
"Will ... will you have someone see to him, please?" Kinton requested, turning toward the helicopter.
"Yes, George," said Klaft. "George...?"
"Well?"
"It would be very instructive--that is, I believe Dr. Chuxolkhee would like to--"
"All right!" yielded Kinton, surprised at the harshness of his own voice. "Just tell him not to bring around any sketches of the various organs for a few months!"
He climbed into the helicopter and slumped into his seat. Presently, he was aware of Klaft edging into the seat across the aisle. He looked up.
"The police will stay until cars from town arrive. They are coming now," said his aide.
* * * * *
Kinton stared at his hands, wondering at the fact that they were not shaking. He felt dejected, empty, not like a man who had just been at a high pitch of excitement.
"Why did you not let him go, George?"
"What? Why ... why ... he would have destroyed the ship you worked so hard to build. There is no safe path through the Dome of Eyes."
"No predictable path," Klaft corrected. "But what then? We would have built you another ship, George, for it was you who showed us how."
Kinton flexed his fingers slowly.
"He was just no good. You know the murder he did here; we can only guess what he did among my own ... among Terrans. Should he have a chance to go back and commit more crimes?"
"I understand, George, the logic of it," said Klaft. "I meant ... it is not my place to say this ... but you seem unhappy."
"Possibly," grunted Kinton wrily.
"We, too, have criminals," said the aide, as gently as was possible in his clicking language. "We do not think it necessary to grieve for the pain they bring upon themselves."
"No, I suppose not," sighed Kinton. "I ... it's just--"
He looked up at the pointed visage, at the strange eyes regarding him sympathetically from beneath the sloping, purple-scaled forehead.
"It's just that now I'm lonely ... again," he said.
AFTER A FEW WORDS
by Randall Garrett
This is a science-fiction story. History is a science; the other part is, as all Americans know, the most fictional field we have today.
He settled himself comfortably in his seat, and carefully put the helmet on, pulling it down firmly until it was properly seated. For a moment, he could see nothing.
Then his hand moved up and, with a flick of the wrist, lifted the visor. Ahead of him, in serried array, with lances erect and pennons flying, was the forward part of the column. Far ahead, he knew, were the Knights Templars, who had taken the advance. Behind the Templars rode the mailed knights of Brittany and Anjou. These were followed by King Guy of Jerusalem and the host of Poitou.
He himself, Sir Robert de Bouain, was riding with the Norman and English troops, just behind the men of Poitou. Sir Robert turned slightly in his saddle. To his right, he could see the brilliant red-and-gold banner of the lion-hearted Richard of England--gules, in pale three lions passant guardant or. Behind the standard-bearer, his great war horse moving with a steady, measured pace, his coronet of gold on his steel helm gleaming in the glaring desert sun, the lions of England on his firm-held shield, was the King himself.
Further behind, the Knights Hospitallers protected the rear, guarding the column of the hosts of Christendom from harassment by the Bedouins.
"By our Lady!" came a voice from his left. "Three days out from Acre, and the accursed Saracens still elude us."
Sir Robert de Bouain twisted again in his saddle to look at the knight riding alongside him. Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.
Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. "They are not far off, Sir Gaeton. They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so they have been marching with us in those hills to the east."
"Like the jackals they are," said Sir Gaeton. "They assail us from the rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to face us in open battle."
"Is it fear, or are they merely gathering their forces?"
"Both," said Sir Gaeton flatly. "They fear us, else they would not dally to amass so fearsome a force. If, as our informers tell us, there are uncounted Turks to the fore, and if, as we are aware, our rear is being dogged by the Bedouin and the black horsemen of Egypt, it would seem that Saladin has at hand more than enough to overcome us, were they all truly Christian knights."
"Give them time. We must wait for their attack, sir knight. It were foolhardy to attempt to seek them in their own hills, and yet they must stop us. They will attack before we reach Jerusalem, fear not."
"We of Gascony fear no heathen Musselman," Sir Gaeton growled. "It's this Hellish heat that is driving me mad." He pointed toward the eastern hills. "The sun is yet low, and already the heat is unbearable."
Sir Robert heard his own laugh echo hollowly within his helmet. "Perhaps 'twere better to be mad when the assault comes. Madmen fight better than men of cooler blood." He knew that the others were baking inside their heavy armor, although he himself was not too uncomfortable.
Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. "In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard--" He gave a short, barking laugh. "I fear no man," he went on, "but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England."
Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. "My lord the King spoke in haste. He has reason to be bitter against Philip of France, as do we all. Philip has deserted the field. He has returned to France in haste, leaving the rest of us to fight the Saracen for the Holy Land leaving only the contingent of his vassal the Duke of Burgundy to remain with us."
"Richard of England has never been on the best of terms with Philip Augustus," said Sir Gaeton.
"No, and with good cause. But he allowed his anger against Philip to color his judgment when he spoke harshly against the Duke of Burgundy. The Duke is no coward, and Richard Plantagenet well knows it. As I said, he spoke in haste."
"And you intervened," said Sir Gaeton.
"It was my duty." Sir Robert's voice was stubborn. "Could we have permitted a quarrel to develop between the two finest knights and warleaders in Christendom at this crucial point? The desertion of Philip of France has cost us dearly. Could we permit the desertion of Burgundy, too?"
"You did what must be done in honor," the Gascon conceded, "but you have not gained the love of Richard by doing so."
Sir Robert felt his jaw set firmly. "My king knows I am loyal."
Sir Gaeton said nothing more, but there was a look in his eyes that showed that he felt that Richard of England might even doubt the loyalty of Sir Robert de Bouain.
* * * * *
Sir Robert rode on in silence, feeling the movement of the horse beneath him.
There was a sudden sound to the rear. Like a wash of the tide from the sea came the sound of Saracen war cries and the clash of steel on steel mingled with the sounds of horses in agony and anger.
Sir Robert turned his horse to look.
The Negro troops of Saladin's Egyptian contingent were thundering down upon the rear! They clashed with the Hospitallers, slamming in like a rain of heavy stones, too close in for the use of bows. There was only the sword against armor, like the sound of a thousand hammers against a thousand anvils.
"Stand fast! Stand fast! Hold them off!" It was the voice of King Richard, sounding like a clarion over the din of battle.
Sir Robert felt his horse move, as though it were urging him on toward the battle, but his hand held to the reins, keeping the great charger in check. The King had said "Stand fast!" and this was no time to disobey the orders of Richard.
The Saracen troops were coming in from the rear, and the Hospitallers were taking the brunt of the charge. They fought like madmen, but they were slowly being forced back.
The Master of the Hospitallers rode to the rear, to the King's standard, which hardly moved in the still desert air, now that the column had stopped moving.
The voice of the Duke of Burgundy came to Sir Robert's ears.
"Stand fast. The King bids you all to stand fast," said the duke, his voice fading as he rode on up the column toward the knights of Poitou and the Knights Templars.
The Master of the Hospitallers was speaking in a low, urgent voice to the King: "My lord, we are pressed on by the enemy and in danger of eternal infamy. We are losing our horses, one after the other!"
"Good Master," said Richard, "it is you who must sustain their attack. No one can be everywhere at once."
The Master of the Hospitallers nodded curtly and charged back into the fray.
The King turned to Sir Baldwin de Carreo, who sat ahorse nearby, and pointed toward the eastern hills. "They will come from there, hitting us in the flank; we cannot afford to amass a rearward charge. To do so would be to fall directly into the hands of the Saracen."
A voice very close to Sir Robert said: "Richard is right. If we go to the aid of the Hospitallers, we will expose the column to a flank attack." It was Sir Gaeton.
"My lord the King," Sir Robert heard his voice say, "is right in all but one thing. If we allow the Egyptians to take us from the rear, there will be no need for Saladin and his Turks to come down on our flank. And the Hospitallers cannot hold for long at this rate. A charge at full gallop would break the Egyptian line and give the Hospitallers breathing time. Are you with me?"
"Against the orders of the King?"
"The King cannot see everything! There are times when a man must use his own judgment! You said you were afraid of no man. Are you with me?"
After a moment's hesitation, Sir Gaeton couched his lance. "I'm with you, sir knight! Live or die, I follow! Strike and strike hard!"
"Forward then!" Sir Robert heard himself shouting. "Forward for St. George and for England!"
"St. George and England!" the Gascon echoed.
* * * * *
Two great war horses began to move ponderously forward toward the battle lines, gaining momentum as they went. Moving in unison, the two knights, their horses now at a fast trot, lowered their lances, picking their Saracen targets with care. Larger and larger loomed the Egyptian cavalrymen as the horses changed pace to a thundering gallop.
The Egyptians tried to dodge, as they saw, too late, the approach of the Christian knights.
Sir Robert felt the shock against himself and his horse as the steel tip of the long ash lance struck the Saracen horseman in the chest. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Sir Gaeton, too, had scored.
The Saracen, impaled on Sir Robert's lance, shot from the saddle as he died. His lighter armor had hardly impeded the incoming spear-point, and now his body dragged it down as he dropped toward the desert sand. Another Moslem cavalryman was charging in now, swinging his curved saber, taking advantage of Sir Robert's sagging lance.
There was nothing else to do but drop the lance and draw his heavy broadsword. His hand grasped it, and it came singing from its scabbard.
The Egyptian's curved sword clanged against Sir Robert's helm, setting his head ringing. In return, the knight's broadsword came about in a sweeping arc, and the Egyptian's horse rode on with the rider's headless body.
Behind him, Sir Robert heard further cries of "St. George and England!"
The Hospitallers, taking heart at the charge, were going in! Behind them came the Count of Champagne, the Earl of Leister, and the Bishop of Beauvais, who carried a great warhammer in order that he might not break Church Law by shedding blood.
Sir Robert's own sword rose and fell, cutting and hacking at the enemy. He himself felt a dreamlike detachment, as though he were watching the battle rather than participating in it.
But he could see that the Moslems were falling back before the Christian onslaught.
And then, quite suddenly, there seemed to be no foeman to swing at. Breathing heavily, Sir Robert sheathed his broadsword.
Beside him, Sir Gaeton did the same, saying: "It will be a few minutes before they can regroup, sir knight. We may have routed them completely."
"Aye. But King Richard will not approve of my breaking ranks and disobeying orders. I may win the battle and lose my head in the end."
"This is no time to worry about the future," said the Gascon. "Rest for a moment and relax, that you may be the stronger later. Here--have an Old Kings."
He had a pack of cigarettes in his gauntleted hand, which he profferred to Sir Robert. There were three cigarettes protruding from it, one slightly farther than the others. Sir Robert's hand reached out and took that one.
"Thanks. When the going gets rough, I really enjoy an Old Kings."
He put one end of the cigarette in his mouth and lit the other from the lighter in Sir Gaeton's hand.
"Yes, sir," said Sir Gaeton, after lighting his own cigarette, "Old Kings are the greatest. They give a man real, deep-down smoking pleasure."
"There's no doubt about it, Old Kings are a man's cigarette." Sir Robert could feel the soothing smoke in his lungs as he inhaled deeply. "That's great. When I want a cigarette, I don't want just any cigarette."
"Nor I," agreed the Gascon. "Old Kings is the only real cigarette when you're doing a real man's work."
"That's for sure." Sir Robert watched a smoke ring expand in the air.
There was a sudden clash of arms off to their left. Sir Robert dropped his cigarette to the ground. "The trouble is that doing a real he-man's work doesn't always allow you to enjoy the fine, rich tobaccos of Old Kings right down to the very end."
"No, but you can always light another later," said the Gascon knight.
* * * * *
King Richard, on seeing his army moving suddenly toward the harassed rear, had realized the danger and had charged through the Hospitallers to get into the thick of the fray. Now the Turks were charging down from the hills, hitting--not the flank as he had expected, but the rear! Saladin had expected him to hold fast!
Sir Robert and Sir Gaeton spurred their chargers toward the flapping banner of England.
The fierce warrior-king of England, his mighty sword in hand, was cutting down Turks as though they were grain-stalks, but still the Saracen horde pressed on. More and more of the terrible Turks came boiling down out of the hills, their glittering scimitars swinging.
Sir Robert lost all track of time. There was nothing to do but keep his own great broadsword moving, swinging like some gigantic metronome as he hacked down the Moslem foes.
And then, suddenly, he found himself surrounded by the Saracens! He was isolated and alone, cut off from the rest of the Christian forces! He glanced quickly around as he slashed another Saracen from pate to breastbone. Where was Sir Gaeton? Where were the others? Where was the red-and-gold banner of Richard?
He caught a glimpse of the fluttering banner far to the rear and started to fall back.
And then he saw another knight nearby, a huge man who swung his sparkling blade with power and force. On his steel helm gleamed a golden coronet! Richard!
And the great king, in spite of his prowess was outnumbered heavily and would, within seconds, be cut down by the Saracen horde!
Without hesitation, Sir Robert plunged his horse toward the surrounded monarch, his great blade cutting a path before him.
He saw Richard go down, falling from the saddle of his charger, but by that time his own sword was cutting into the screaming Saracens and they had no time to attempt any further mischief to the King. They had their hands full with Sir Robert de Bouain.
He did not know how long he fought there, holding his charger motionless over the inert body of the fallen king, hewing down the screaming enemy, but presently he heard the familiar cry of "For St. George and for England" behind him. The Norman and English troops were charging in, bringing with them the banner of England!
And then Richard was on his feet, cleaving the air about him with his own broadsword. Its bright edge, besmeared with Saracen blood, was biting viciously into the foe.
The Turks began to fall back. Within seconds, the Christian knights were boiling around the embattled pair, forcing the Turks into retreat. And for the second time, Sir Robert found himself with no one to fight.
And then a voice was saying: "You have done well this day, sir knight. Richard Plantagenet will not forget."
Sir Robert turned in his saddle to face the smiling king.
"My lord king, be assured that I would never forget my loyalty to my sovereign and liege lord. My sword and my life are yours whenever you call."
King Richard's gauntleted hand grasped his own. "If it please God, I shall never ask your life. An earldom awaits you when we return to England, sir knight."
And then the king mounted his horse and was running full gallop after the retreating Saracens.
* * * * *
Robert took off his helmet.
He blinked for a second to adjust his eyes to the relative dimness of the studio. After the brightness of the desert that the televicarion helmet had projected into his eyes, the studio seemed strangely cavelike.
"How'd you like it, Bob?" asked one of the two producers of the show.
Robert Bowen nodded briskly and patted the televike helmet. "It was O.K.," he said. "Good show. A little talky at the beginning, and it needs a better fade-out, but the action scenes were fine. The sponsor ought to like it--for a while, at least."
"What do you mean, 'for a while'?"
Robert Bowen sighed. "If this thing goes on the air the way it is, he'll lose sales."
"Why? Commercial not good enough?"
"Too good! Man, I've smoked Old Kings, and, believe me, the real thing never tasted as good as that cigarette did in the commercial!"
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK
By Anthony Gilmore
Had not old John Sewell, the historian, recognized Hawk Carse for what he was--a creator of new space-frontiers, pioneer of vast territories for commerce, molder of history through his long feud with the powerful Eurasian scientist, Ku Sui--the adventurer would doubtless have passed into oblivion like other long-forgotten spacemen. We have Sewell's industry to thank for our basic knowledge of Carse. His "Space-Frontiers of the Last Century" is a thorough work and the accepted standard, but even it had of necessity to be compressed, and many meaty episodes of the Hawk's life go almost unmentioned. For instance, Sewell gives a rough synopsis of "The Affair of the Brains," but dismisses its aftermath entirely, in the following fashion (Vol. II, pp. 25O-251):
"... there was only one way out: to smash the great dome covering one end of the asteroid and so release the life-sustaining air inside. Captain Carse achieved this by sending the space-ship Scorpion crashing through the dome unmanned, and he, Friday and Eliot Leithgow were caught up in the out-rushing flood of air and catapulted into space, free of the dome and Dr. Ku Sui. Clad as they were in the latter's self-propulsive space-suits, they were quite capable of reaching Jupiter's Satellite III, only some thirty thousand miles away.
"Then speeding through space, Captain Carse discovered why he had never been able to find the asteroid-stronghold. He could not see it! Dr. Ku Sui had protected his lair by making it invisible! But Carse was at least confident that by breaking the dome he had destroyed all life within in, including the coordinated brains.
"So ended The Affair of the Brains.[1]
"The three comrades reached Satellite III safely, where, after a few minor adventures, Captain Carse...."
[Footnote 1: See the March, 1932, Issue of Astounding Stories.]
Sewell's ruthless surgery is most evident in that last paragraph. Of course his telescoping of the events was due to limited space; but he did wish to draw a full-length, character-revealing portrait of Hawk Carse, and with "... reached Satellite III safely, where, after a few minor adventures, Captain Carse ..." learned old John Sewell slid over one of his greatest opportunities.
The resourcefulness of Hawk Carse! In these "few minor adventures" he had but one weapon with which to joust against overwhelming odds on an apparently hopeless quest. This weapon was a space-suit--nothing more--yet so brilliantly and daringly did he wield its unique advantages that he penetrated seemingly impregnable barriers and achieved alone what another man would have required the ray-batteries of a space-fleet to do.
But here is the story, heard first from Friday's lips and told and re-told down through the years on the lonely ranches of the outlying planets, of that one dark, savage night on Satellite II and of the indomitable man who winged his lone way through it. Hawk Carse! Old adventurer! Rise from your unknown star-girdled grave and live again!
* * * * *
Thirty thousand miles was the gap between Dr. Ku Sui's asteroid and Satellite III, the nearest haven. Thirty thousand miles in a space-ship is about the time of a peaceful cigarro. Thirty thousand miles in a cramped awkward space-suit grow into a nightmare journey, an eternity of suffering, and they will kill a good number of those who traverse them so.
For, take away the metal bulkheads and walls, soft lights and warmth of a space-liner, get out in a small cramped space-suit, and space loses its mask of harmlessness and stands revealed as the bleak, unfeeling torturer it is. There is the loneliness, the sense of timelessness, the sensation of falling, and above all there is the "weightless" feeling from pressure-changes in man's blood-stream--changes sickening in effect and soon resulting in delirium. Nothing definite; no gravity; no "bottom," no "top"; merely a vacuum, comprehended by the human mind through an all-enveloping nausea, and seen in confused spectral labyrinths as the whole cold panorama of icy stars staggers and swirls and the universe goes mad. Such a trip was enough to churn the resistance of the hardiest traveler, but for Hawk Carse, Friday and Eliot Leithgow there was more. On Ku Sui's asteroid they had gone through hours of mental and physical tension without break or relaxation, and they were sleep-starved and food-starved and their brains fagged and dull. What would have been a strong reaction on land hit them, in space, with tripled force.
So Friday--our ultimate authority--remembered little of the transit. He had bad short periods of wakefulness, when the recurring agony of his body woke and racked him afresh, and only during these did he see the other two grotesque figures, sometimes widely separated, sometimes close, dazzlingly half-lit by Jupiter's light. But he was conscious that one of the three was keeping them more or less together, though only later did he know that this one was Carse--Carse, who hardly slept, who drove off unconsciousness and fought through nausea to keep at his task of shepherding, failing which they would have drifted miles apart and become hopelessly separated. He was able to maintain them in a fairly compact group by his discovery of a short metal direction rod on the breast of the suit, which gave horizontal movement in the direction it was pointed when its button was pressed.
* * * * *
But though it seemed endless, the journey was not; Satellite III grew and grew. Its pale circle spread outward; dark blurs took definition; a spot of blue winked forth--the Great Briney Lake. The globe at last became concave, then, after they entered its atmosphere, convex. This last stretch was the most grueling.
Friday remembered it in vivid flashes. Time after time he dropped into confused sleep, each time to be awakened by Carse jarring into him, shouting at him through the suits' small radio sets, keeping him--and Leithgow--attentive to the job of decelerating. The man's efforts must have been terrific, taxing all his enormous driving power, for he at that time was without doubt more exhausted than they. But he succeeded, and he was a haggard-faced, feverish shell of himself when at last he had them in a dangling drunken halt in the air a hundred feet from the surface.
Primal savagery lay stretched out below, and there seemed to be no safe spot whereon to land. The foul, deep swamp that reached for miles on every side, the towering trees that sprouted their spiny trunks and limbs from it, the interlaced razor-edged vines and creeper-growths--all was a stirring welter of tropic life, life varied and voracious and untamed. From the tiny poisonous bansi insects layers deep on the nearest tree to the monster gantor that crouched in a clump of weeds, gently sawing his fangs back and forth, all the creatures of this world were against man.
Carse scanned the scene wearily. They had to land; had to sleep under normal conditions, and eat and drink, before they could go further. But where? Where was haven? He snapped out the direction rod, moved away a short distance, and then glimpsed, below and to the left, a small peninsula of firm soil which seemed safe and uninhabited. And there was a pool of fairly clear water before it, containing nothing but an old uprooted stump. He came back to the others, shook them, and led them down to the place he had discovered.
They landed with a thump which seemed to shake all life from two of them. Friday and Eliot Leithgow collapsed into inert heaps, asleep immediately. Carse extracted a ray-gun from the belt of Leithgow's suit and prepared to stand watch. But that was too much. He over-estimated his capacity. He had come through thirty hours of hellish sleep-denied delirium, and he could not stave sleep off any longer. He staggered and went down, and his eyelids were glued in sleep when his body hit the ground.
But mechanically, with an instinct that sleep could not deny, his left hand kept clasped around the butt of the ray-gun....
* * * * *
Satellite III's day has an average of seven hours' duration, her night of six. It was perhaps the last hour of daylight when the three metal and fabric-clad figures lying outsprawled on the little thumb-shaped piece of soil had landed. Now quickly the huge sweeping rim of Jupiter plunged down, and night fell over the land.
Fierce darkness. Jungle and swamp awoke with their scale of savage life. Swift swooping shapes winged out from the trees, prey-hungry eyes gleaming green. And from the swamps came bellowings and stirrings from monster mud-encrusted bodies, awakening to their nocturnal quest for food. The night reechoed with the harsh cacophony of their cries.
With lumbering caution, its smooth knob head waving on a long reptilian neck, its heavy armored tail dragging behind its body's folds of flesh, a giant night-thing came stumping out of a copse of jungle growth--a buru. Its eyes were watchful, but centered mainly on the pool of water to one side of the peninsula of firm soil. Its drinking water was there. With several pauses, it went right out on the spit, and a flat-bottomed foot twice the size of an elephant's missed one of the sleeping forms by inches. But the buru cared not for them. It was not a flesh-eater. Its undulating neck stretched far out; its head dipped; water was lapped up--until it caught sight of the uprooted giant stump lying pitched in the pool. The beast drank but little after that, and retreated as cautiously as it had come.
Five or six of its fellows of the swamps followed at intervals to the water, grotesque hulking shapes, odorous and slimy with mud. All drank from the same spot; all ignored, save for a tentative rooting snuffle, the unconscious figures lying puny beneath them. But all noticed the twisted roots of the stump, sticking out in a score of directions, and avoided them.
And then there came smaller, more cautious animals who did not drink from the favored spot, who surveyed it, sniffed, hesitated, and finally retreated. There was a good reason for this caution.
For with the falling of night the stump had been at least thirty feet out in the water; now it was not ten feet from the side of the spit, and not twelve feet from the nearest sleeping figure. The suits that clad the three figures were sealed, the face-plates closed, so there was probably--after their trip through the void--no man smell to attract the giants of swamp and trees. But those three figures had moved. That was lure enough for one monster.
When the first ruddy arrows of Jupiter's light laced through the jungle's highest foliage, the twisted, gnarled stump was settled on the peninsula's rim, half out of the water. And when day burst, when Jupiter's flaming arch pushed over into view, the long seeming-roots eeled forward in sinuous reptilian life.
* * * * *
In one second Hawk Carse was snatched from sleep into the turmoil of a fight for life.
Something hard and enormously powerful was wrapping his waist with a vise-like grip that threatened to cut him in two. He felt a leg go up and crumple back, almost breaking under the force of a lashing blow. He was squeezed in, caged, compressed, by a score of tough, encircling tentacles, and his whole body was drawn toward a wide, flexible, black-lipped mouth yawning in the center of the monster he had thought a stump. Moving with loathsome life, its sinewy root-tentacles sucking him whole into the maw, the thing hunched itself back to the water.
The water frothed around Carse. He had been too dazed to resist; he had not known what had gripped him in his unconsciousness and weakness. But he remembered his ray-gun.
The lips of the hideous mouth were pressing close. Both were now under the surface. Carse's suit was still tight and he could breathe even while totally submerged in the water. He strained his left arm against the tentacle that looped it, worked the ray-gun still clasped in his hand in line with the thing's monstrous carcass, and at once, gasping and sick, pulled the trigger clear back.
The orange stream sizzled as it cleared a path through the water and bit true into the gaping mouth. There sounded a curious, subterranean sob; beady eyes on each side of the mouth bulged; the woodish body quivered in agony. Its tentacles slackened, and, half fainting, the Hawk wrenched free. He staggered up onto the land, streams of water running off the suit, and toppled over; and from there he saw the thing drag its writhing shuddering shape farther out from the shore. When perhaps sixty feet away it again subsided into a "harmless" uprooted old stump....
* * * * *
Carse lay resting and collecting himself for a quarter of an hour, while Leithgow and Friday slept on, unconscious of what had happened; then he got to his feet, opened their face-plates and bathed Leithgow's pale brow with water. The scientist awoke with the quickness of old men, but Friday stirred and stretched and blinked and sat up at last, yawning.
The Hawk answered their questions about his wet suit with a brief explanation of the fight, then got down to business.
"There's water here, but we must have food," he said. "Friday, you go back and find fruit; some isuan weed, too, if it's growing nearby. A chew of it will stimulate us. Keep your ray-gun ready. I wouldn't be here if I'd not had mine."
The isuan was a big help. In its prepared form it is degrading, mind-destroying, but in natural state it gives a powerful and comparatively harmless stimulation. Chewing on the leaves that the Negro brought back, they made strength and renewed vitality for their bodies, and came, for the first time since they had started their flight through space, to a near-normal state. Meaty, yellow globules of pear-like fruit, followed by prudent drafts of water, aided also. Friday's long-absent grin returned as he bit into the juicy fruit, and he announced through a mouthful:
"Well, things're lookin' sunny again! We've got food and water inside us; we can reach Master Leithgow's laboratory in these here suits; an' to top it all we've finished high an' mighty Ku Sui. He's dead at last! Boy, it sure feels good to know it!"
Eliot Leithgow was lying back, breathing deeply of the fresh morning air. His lined, worn face and body were relaxed. "Yes," he murmured, "it is good to know that Dr. Ku is now just a thing of the past. He and his coordinated brains." He glanced aside at the Hawk, sitting silent and still, and stroking, as always when in meditation, the bangs of flaxen hair which obscured his forehead. "Why so serious, Carse?" he asked.
* * * * *
The adventurer's gray eyes were cold and sober. No relaxation showed in them. His hand paused in its slow smoothing movement and he spoke.
"Why I overlooked it before," he said quietly, almost as if to himself, "I don't know. Probably because I was too tired, and too busy, and too sick to think. But now I see."
"What?" Leithgow sat up straight.
"Eliot," said the Hawk clearly, "doesn't it seem strange to you that Ku Sui's asteroid continued to be invisible after we had smashed through its dome?"
"What do you mean?"
"We've assumed that our smashing the dome and opening it to space killed Ku Sui and everyone inside, and destroyed all the mechanisms, including the coordinated brains. But the mechanism controlling the asteroid's invisibility was not destroyed. The place remained invisible."
The old scientist's face grew tense. Carse paused for a moment.
"That means," he went on, "that Ku Sui provided the invisibility machine with special protection for just such an emergency. And do you think he would give it such protection and not his coordinated brains? Wouldn't he first protect the brains, his most cherished possession?"
Eliot Leithgow knew what this meant. The Hawk had promised the brains in that machine--brains of five renowned scientists, kept cruelly, unnaturally alive by Dr. Ku--that he would destroy them. And his promises were always kept.
There was no evading the logic of this reasoning. The Master Scientist nodded. "Yes," he answered. "He certainly would."
"I couldn't damage the case they were in," Carse continued. "The whole device seemed self-contained. It means just one thing: special protection. Since the mechanism for invisibility survived the crashing of the dome, we may be sure that the brain machine did too. And more than that: we may assume that there was special protection for the most precious thing of all to Dr. Ku Sui--his own life."
Friday's mouth gaped open. The old scientist cried out:
"My God! Ku Sui--still alive?"
"It would seem so," said Hawk Carse.
He amplified his evidence. "Look at these space-suits we're wearing. We got them and escaped by them, but they're Dr. Ku's. Couldn't he have protected himself with one too? He had plenty of time. And then the construction of the asteroid's buildings--all metal, with tight, sealed doors! Oh, stupid, stupid! Why didn't I see it all before? Here, in my weakness and sickness, I thought we'd killed Ku Sui and destroyed the coordinated brains!"
Leithgow looked suddenly very old and tired. The calamity did not end there. There were other angles, and an immediate one of high danger. In a lifeless voice he said:
"Carse, our whole situation's changed by this. We intended to go straight to my laboratory, but we may not be able to. The laboratory may already be closed to us. And even if not, there'd be a big risk in going there."
"Closed to us by what?" the Hawk demanded sharply. "At risk from what?"
Old Leithgow pressed his hands over his face. "Let me think a moment," he said.
* * * * *
There were very good reasons why Eliot Leithgow maintained his chief laboratory on the dangerous Satellite III. Other planets might have offered more friendly locations, but III possessed stores of accessible minerals valuable to the scientist's varied work, and its position in the solar system was most convenient, being roughly halfway between Earth and the outermost frontiers. Leithgow had counterbalanced the inherent peril of the laboratory's location by ingenious camouflage, intricate defenses and hidden underground entrances; had, indeed, hidden it so well that none of the scavengers and brigands and more personal enemies who infested Port o' Porno remotely suspected that his headquarters was on the satellite at all. Ships, men, could pass over it a score of times with never an inkling that it lay below.
After a short silence, Eliot Leithgow began his explanation.
"You'll remember," he told the intent Hawk, "that Ku Sui's men kidnapped me from our friend Kurgo's house in Porno. There were five of them: robot-coolies. They took us entirely by surprise, and killed Kurgo and bore me to Ku Sui's asteroid.
"Well, I had come to Kurgo's house in the first place to arrange for supplies for building an addition to my laboratory, and I had with me a sheaf of papers containing plans for this addition. The plans are not important; they tell nothing--but there was a figure on one of the papers that might reveal everything! The figure 5,576.34. Do you know what that stands for?"
The adventurer thought for a moment, then shook his head. Leithgow nodded. He went on:
"Few would. But among the few would be Ku Sui!
"You'll remember that on building my laboratory we considered it extremely important to have it on the other side of the globe from Port o' Porno--diametrically opposite--so that the movements of our ships to and from it would be hidden from that pirate port. Diametrically opposite--remember? Well, the diameter of Satellite III is 3,550 miles. This diameter multiplied by 3.1416 gives 11,152.63 miles as the circumference, and one half the circumference is 5,576.34 miles--the exact distance of my laboratory from Port o' Porno!"
"I see," Carse murmured. "I see."
"That figure meant nothing to you, nor would it to the average person; but to a mathematician and astronomer--to Dr. Ku Sui--it would be a challenge! He would be studying the paper on which it is written down. One of Eliot Leithgow's papers. Plans for an addition to a laboratory. Therefore, Eliot Leithgow's laboratory. And then the figure: half the circumference of Satellite III. Why, he would at once deduce that it gave the precise location of my laboratory!"
* * * * *
The Hawk rose quickly. "If those papers fell into Dr. Ku's hands--"
"He would know exactly where the laboratory is," Leithgow finished. "He would search. Its camouflage would not hold him long. And that would be the end of my laboratory--and us too, if we were caught inside."
"Yes," snapped the Hawk. "You imply that the papers were left in Kurgo's house?"
"I had them in the bottom drawer of the clothes-chest in the room I always use. The coolies did not take them. At that time they wanted nothing but me."
Friday, rubbing his woolly crown, interjected: "But, even if Ku Sui's still alive, he wouldn't know about them papers. Far's I can see, they're safe."
"No!" Leithgow cried. "That's it! They're not! Follow it logically, point by point. Assuming that Dr. Ku's alive, he has one point of contact with us--Kurgo's house, in Porno, where I was kidnapped. He wants us badly. He will anticipate that one of us will go back to that house: to care for Kurgo's body, to get my belongings--for several reasons. So he will radio down--he probably can't come himself--for henchmen to station themselves at the house and to ransack it thoroughly for anything pertaining to me. The papers would fall into their hands!"
"All right," said Carse levelly. "We must get those papers. They will either be still in the house or in the possession of Dr. Ku's men at Porno. But whichever it is--we must get them before Ku Sui does." He paused.
"Well," he said, "that means me." He turned and looked down at the old man and smiled. "There's no use risking the three of us. I'll go to Kurgo's house myself."
"If the papers are gone, suh?" asked Friday.
"I don't know. What I do will depend on what I discover there."
"But," said Leithgow, "there may be guards! There may be an ambush!"
"I have a powerful weapon. M. S. Unknown, so far; new to Satellite III. Ku Sui himself supplied it. This space-suit."
* * * * *
The Hawk scanned the "western" sky and began giving brisk orders.
"Eliot, you've got to go to some place of safety until this is all over. You too, Eclipse, to take care of him. Let me see.... There's Cairnes, and Wilson.... Wilson's the one. He should be at his ranch now. You remember it: Ban Wilson's ranch, on the Great Briney Lake? Right. Both of you will go there and wait. I'll meet you there when I'm finished. And at that time I'll either have the papers or know that Ku Sui has found the laboratory."
Again on his feet, the old Master Scientist regarded anxiously this slender, coldly calculating man who was his closest friend. He was afraid. "Carse," he said, "you're going back alone into probable danger. The papers--the laboratory--they're important--but not so important as your life."
There was visible now in the Hawk's face that hard, unflinching will-to-do that had made him the spectacular adventurer that he was. "Did you ever know me to run from danger?" he asked softly. "Did you ever know me to run from Ku Sui?..." And Eliot Leithgow knew that the course was set, no matter what it might hold.
Carse again glanced at Jupiter, hanging massive in the blue overhead. "About three hours of daylight left," he observed. "Now, close face-plates. We must go up--far up--to get our bearings."
Altitude swept back the horizon as they arrowed up through the warm, glowing air. From far in the heavens, perhaps twenty miles, Carse saw what he looked for--a bright gleam of silver in the monochrome of the terrain, where Jupiter's light struck on the smooth metal hides of a group of space-ships resting in the satellite's lone port, Porno. Eighty, a hundred miles away--some such distance. Into the helmet's tiny microphone he said:
"That's Porno, over to the 'north,' and there to one side is the Great Briney. It's not far: you won't have to hurry, Eliot. Head straight for the lake and follow the near shoreline toward Porno, and you'll come to Ban Wilson's ranch. Now we part."
The three clinging, giant forms separated. The direction-rods for horizontal movement were out-hinged. A last touch of mitten-gloves on the bloated suits fabric; a nod and a smile through the face-plates; and a few parting words:
"Good luck, old comrade!"--in Leithgow's soft voice; and the Negro's deep, emphatic bass: "Don't know how far these little sets work, suh, but if you need me, call. I'll keep listenin'!"
And then white man and black were speeding away in the ruddy flood of Jupiter-light, and Hawk Carse faced the danger trail alone, as was his wont.
* * * * *
Caution rather than speed had to mark his journey, Carse knew. Several ranches lay scattered in the jungle smother between him and the port--stations where the weed isuan was collected and refined into the deadly finished product. They were worked for the most part by Venusians allied with Ku Sui: the Eurasian practically controlled the drug trade; and therefore, if any alarm had been broadcast, many men would already be on the lookout for him.
So the Hawk dropped low, and chose a course through the screening walls of the jungle. It did not take him long to attain full mastery of the suit's controls, and soon he was gliding cleanly through the hollows created by the mammoth outthrusting treetops in a course crazy and twisted, but one which kept him pointing always towards Porno. Presently he found an easier highway and a faster--a sluggish, dirty yellow stream, quite broad, which ended, he was sure, in a swamp within a mile of his destination.
Flanked by the jungle growth which sprouted thickly from each bank, a gray, ghostly shape in the shadows lying over the water, he sped through the dying afternoon. He kept at least ten feet above the surface, well out of reach of such water beasts as from time to time reared up through the placid surface to scan him. Once a huge gantor, gulping a drink from the bank, snorted and went trumpeting away at the grotesque sight of him--flying without wings!--and once too, on rising cautiously above the treetops to reconnoiter, Carse saw life far more perilous to him: a small party of men, stooping over a swamp-brink and plucking the ripe isuan weed. At this he dived steeply and fled on; and he knew he had gone unobserved, for there came no outcry of discovery from behind.
* * * * *
Jupiter lowered its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached. The stream broadened into shallow pockets; patches of swamp appeared and absorbed the stream; and Carse knew he was close to his destination.
He cut his speed and glanced around. Ahead, the dark spire of a giant sakari tree climbed into the gloom. It would be a good place. The man rose slowly; like a wraith on the wind he lifted into its top-most branches; and there, in the broad, cuplike leaves, he warily ensconced himself. For man-sounds came into his opened helmet, and through a fringe of leaves, across a mile of tumbled swamp and marsh, he could see the guarding fences of the cosmetropolis of Porno.
A last slice of blotched, flaming red, the rim of setting Jupiter, still silhouetted Porno, sprawled inside its high, electric-wired fences, and the flood of fading light brushed the town with beauty. The rows of tin shacks which housed its dives, the clustered, nondescript hovels, the merchants' grim strongholds of steel--all merged into a glowing mirage, a scene far alien to the brooding swamp and savage jungle in whose breast it lay. Here and there several space-ships reared their sunset-gilded flanks, glittering high-lights in the final glorious burst of Jupiter-light....
The planet's rim vanished abruptly, and Porno returned to true character.
For a moment it appeared what it was: a blotched, disordered huddle, ugly, raw, fit companion of the swamp and jungle. Then beads of light appeared, some still, some winking, one crooked line of flaring illumination marking the Street of the Sailors, along which the notorious kantrans flourished, now ready for their nightly brood of men who sought forgetfulness in revelry. Soon, Carse knew, the faint man-noises he heard would grow into a broad fabric of sound, stitched across by shrieks and roars as the isuan and alkite flowed free. And all around the lone watcher in the sakari tree the night-monsters were crawling out in jungle and swamp on the dark routine of their lives as, in the town, two-legged creatures even lower in their degradation went abroad after the dope and liquor which gave them their vicious recreation.
The night flowed thicker around him.
* * * * *
From somewhere behind, the Hawk heard a suck of half-fluid mud as a giant body stretched in its sleeping place. A tree close to his suddenly fluttered with the unseen life it harbored. A hungry gantor raised its long deep bellow to the night, and another answered, and another.
It grew pitch black. Only a sprinkling of pin-points of light marked Porno to the eye. The sky beyond the town matched the sky to the rear. Jupiter's light now had fled the higher air levels. The time had come.
Cautiously Carse brushed the branches aside, rose upright and pressed the mitten switch over to repulsion. In instant response his giant's bulk lifted lightly. He sped upward, straight and fast; and at two thousand feet, still untouched by the sinking planet's rays, he brought himself to an approximate halt and peered below.
Port o' Porno lay spread out beneath, one thin line of light-pricks off which angled fainter lines, extending only a short distance and then dying widely off. There were perhaps two thousand men in the town--men from all the countries of the three planets inhabited by creatures that could be called human--and of these at least three quarters knew Hawk Carse as an enemy, because of his intolerance for their dope-trade. His approach to the house Number 574 had to be swift, direct, unseen, unheard.
He was able to make it so. Pointing the direction rod, he winged forward until directly above an estimated spot, then dropped a thousand feet. A pause while he searched; another drop. He knew Kurgo's house well, but the scene was confusing from above, and the street the house was on was always dark at night.
He made it out at last. The squat two-storied structure, similar to other merchants' strongholds, seemed unlit and unwatched. Carse swung back the hinged mittens of the suit and slid his hands out ready for action. In his left he took his ray-gun; then, pressing the mitten-switch, he dropped straight, silent, swift, like the Hawk he now truly was.
* * * * *
A single window-port, high up, broke the smooth rear of Kurgo's house. It faced a silent alleyway. The steel shutters were closed, but a pull swung them noiselessly outward. For a brief moment Carse's bulging giant's figure of metal and fabric hung black against the shadowed window-port. The room he peered into was solid black. He heard no sound. Clumsily he thrust out and stepped in.
Silence. Inky nothingness--but the air was weighted with many things, and among them one which brought the short hairs on the Hawk's neck prickling erect. A smell! It was not to be mistaken--a faint, but rank and fetid and altogether identifying smell--the body-smell of a Venusian!
For a moment Hawk Carse's breathing stopped. Metal clanked on metal for an instant as he moved from the window-port and became one with the darkness inside; then silence again, as his eyes trained into the vault and his hand held ready on the ray-gun. He waited.
Was it a trap? He had seen no guards watching the house; had sensed it deserted. But the steep shutters, unlocked, readily permitting entrance--and the smell! Even if not still there, a Venusian had been in the room, and a Venusian of Port o' Porno was an enemy. A Venusian.... There were only some sixty on the whole satellite, and, of these, fifty were the men of Lar Tantril. Lar Tantril, powerful henchman of Dr. Ku Sui, director of the Eurasian's drug trade on Satellite III. But that line of thought had to wait.
"I see you!" he whispered suddenly and sharply. "My gun's on you. Come forward!"
* * * * *
No answer; not the slightest sign or stir in the darkness. He breathed again.
Carse knew the arrangement of Kurgo's house. He was in his second-story sleeping-room. There was a door in the wall ahead, leading into the room Leithgow was accustomed to use on his visits, and there the papers should be. But first he would have to have light.
His ears pitched for any betraying sound, Carse moved heavily to his left until a wall arrested him. He felt along it, located the desk he sought for and scoured through it. His fingers found the flash he knew was there.
The darkness then was slit by a hard straight line of white. It shot over the room picking out overturned chairs, a bowl that had toppled to the floor, scattering its contents of ripe akalot fruit, a sleeping couch, its sheets and pillows awry, and--something human.
A half-clothed body lay sprawled beside the couch, its hands thrust clutching forward and its unseeing eyes still staring at the door whence had come the shots that had burnt out the left side of its chest. Dead. Three days dead. The murdered master of the house, Kurgo, lying where Ku Sui's robot-coolies had shot him down.
The Venusian-smell swept more strongly into his nostrils as the adventurer opened the door into Leithgow's room. No Venusian had ever been in those rooms before the abduction.
Carse's light danced over the room's confusion: a laboratory table overturned; apparatus spilled; several chains flung around, one splintered: mute signs of the struggle Eliot Leithgow had offered his kidnappers.
In a corner stood a metal chest. In the bottom drawer was the all-significant answer. Hawk Carse crossed the room and slid it open.
The papers were gone!
* * * * *
Methodically Carse hunted through every drawer and corner of the room, but he found no trace of them. Every article that would be of value to an ordinary thief was left; the one thing important to Dr. Ku Sui, the sheaf of papers, was missing.
The presence of the Venusian body-smell started an important train of thought in the Hawk's mind. It signified that the papers had been taken by henchmen of Ku Sui, which in turn signified that Ku Sui had survived the crashing of the dome and was alive and again aggressively dangerous. But was the Eurasian already on Satellite III? Was he already in personal possession of the papers?--perhaps conducting a search for Leithgow's laboratory?
Or did it mean that Dr. Ku had merely radioed instructions for his Venusian henchmen to ransack the house, take whatever pertained to Leithgow, and wait for him?
Venusians.... There was only one logical man; and as Hawk Carse thought of him in that dark and silent house of tragedy, his right hand slowly rose to the bangs of hair over his forehead and began to stroke them....
His bangs were an unusual style for the period; they stamped him and attracted unwanted attention; but he would wear his hair in that fashion until he went down in death. For he had once been trapped--trapped neatly by five men, and maltreated: one, Judd the Kite, whose life had paid already for his part in the ugly business; two others whom he was not now concerned with; the fourth, Dr. Ku Sui; and the fifth--a Venusian....
That fifth, the Venusian, was Lar Tantril, now one of Ku Sal's most powerful henchmen, and director of his interplanetary drug traffic--Lar Tantril, who possessed an impregnable isuan ranch only twenty-five miles from Port o' Porno--Lar Tantril, who probably had directed the stealing of the papers from this room! The papers, if not already in Ku Sui's hands, should be at Tantril's ranch.
Carse's deduction was followed by a swift decision. He had to raid Lar Tantril's ranch.
He knew the place fairly well. Once, even, he had attacked it, in his Star Devil, seeking to wipe out his debt against Tantril; but he had been driven off by the ranch's mighty offensive rays.
It was impregnable, Tantril was fond of boasting. Situated on the brink of the Great Briney, its other three sides were flanked by thick, swampy jungle, in which the isuan grew and was gathered by Tantril's Venusian workers. Ranch? More a fort than a ranch, with its electrified, steel-spiked fence; its three watch-towers, lookouts always posted there against the threat of hijackers or enemies; its powerful ray-batteries and miscellany of smaller weapons. A less vulnerable place for the keeping of Eliot Leithgow's papers could hardly have been found in all the frontiers of the solar system.
He, Carse, had raided it in a modern fighting space-ship, and failed. Now, with nothing but a space-suit and a ray-gun, he had to raid it again--and succeed!
* * * * *
The adventurer did not leave immediately. He thought it wise to make what preparations he could. His important weapon was the space-suit; therefore, he took it off and studied and inspected its several intricate mechanisms as well as he could in the carefully guarded light of his flash.
It was motivated, he saw, by dual sets of gravity-plates, in separate space-tight compartments. One set was located in the extremely thick soles of the heavy boots; the other rested on the top of the helmet. He saw why this was. The gravity-plates for repulsion were those in the helmet; for attraction, those in the boot-soles. This kept the wearer of the suit always in an upright, head-up position.
The logical plan of attack had grown in Carse's mind: down and up! Down to the papers, then up and away before the men on the ranch knew what was happening: he could suppose that they, like all others on the satellite, had no knowledge of a self-propulsive space-suit. The success of his raid depended entirely on keeping the two gravity mechanisms intact. If they were destroyed, or failed to function, he would be locked to the ground in a prison of metal and fabric: clamped down, literally, by a terrific dead weight! The suit was extremely heavy, particularly the boots, and Carse learned that the wearer was able to walk in it only because a portion of the helmet's repulsive force was continually working to approximate a normal body gravity.
A chance to succeed--if the two vital points were kept intact! If they failed, he would have to slip out of the imprisoning suit and use his quick wits and deadly ray-gun in clearing a path to Ban Wilson, his nearest friend, whose ranch, fourteen miles from Tantril's stronghold, was where Eliot Leithgow and Friday would be awaiting him.
It was characteristic of Hawk Carse that he never even considered calling on Wilson's resources of men and weapons to help him. A Hawk he was: wiry, fierce-clawed, bold against odds and danger, most capable and deadly when striking alone....
* * * * *
After scanning the whole project, Carse attended to other needs. He ate some of the akalot fruit spilled over the floor of the adjoining room; opened a can of water and drank deeply; limbered his muscles well; even rested for five minutes. Then he was ready to leave.
He soon was again in the cold space-suit, fastening on the helmet. He left the face-plate open. The left mitten he hinged back, so as to be able to grip the ray-gun in his bare hand. Then, a looming giant shadow in the darkness, he shuffled to the rear window-port.
Carse steadied himself on the sill. The night-bedlam from the Street of the Sailors, punctuated by far, hungry bellows from swamp monsters, sounded in his ears. Enemies, human and animal, ringed him in Kurgo's house: but up above lay a clean, cold highway, an open highway, stretching straight to the heart of the danger which was his destination. He turned the mitten-switch over to quick repulsion and leaped up to the waiting heavens.
* * * * *
On the ground was a world of night: a mile up showed a great circle of black, one edge of which was marked by a faint, eery glow from further-setting Jupiter.
Save for that far-off spectral hint of the giant occulted planet, Hawk Carse sped in darkness. Through the open face-plate the night wind buffeted his emotionless, stone-set face: his suit whistled a song of speed as the gusts laced by it. Down and ahead his direction rod pointed, and with ever-gathering momentum he followed its leading finger. The lights of Porno dwindled to points; grew yet finer, then were gone. Several times a sparse cluster of other lights, lonely in the black tide of III's surface, ran beneath him, signaling a ranch. The last of these melted into the ink behind, and there was a period unrelieved by sign of man's presence below.
And then at last one bright solitary spot of light appeared, far ahead. It was a danger signal to the Hawk. He had to descend at once. From then on, speed had to be forsaken for caution. Watchful eyes were beneath that light, lying keen on the heavens; a whole intricate offense and defense system surrounded it. It was the central watch-beacon of Lar Tantril's ranch.
Carse swooped low.
He came into the night-world of the surface. No faint-lit horizon showed; there was only the darkness, and darker shadows peopling it. At the height of a mile there had been no signs of the satellite's native life, but at an elevation scarcely above the treetops the flying man was brought all too close to the reality of the denizens of the gloomy jungle below. Out of the black smother came clues to the life within it: sounds of monstrous bodies moving through the undergrowth and mud, recurring death-screams, howls and angry chatterings....
* * * * *
This below; there was more above. He was not the only living thing that soared in the night. Swift fleeting batlike shapes would appear from nowhere for one sharp second, would beset him one after another in an almost constant stream, thinking his comparatively clumsy, bloated bulk easy prey, and then be gone. He snapped shut his face-plate under their assault. Sometimes there came different, more powerful wings, and he would duck in mechanical reaction, sensing the wings sweep past, often feeling them as, with sharp pecks and quick thudding blows, they sought to stun him. But the suit was stout; the repulsed attackers could only follow a little, glaring at him with fire-green malevolent eyes, then leave to seek smaller prey.
The watch-beacon began to wink more often through the ranks of intervening trees as he neared the ranch. Carse was gliding so low that often branches raked and twisted him in his course. His low transit allowed one tree to loose great peril upon him.
The tree loomed a black giant in his path. Fifty feet away, he was swerving to wind around it when he noticed its dark upper branches a-tremble. He had only this for warning when, with chilling surprise, what appeared to be the entire top of the tree rose, severed itself completely from the rest and soared right out to meet him.
A shape from a nightmare, it slid over the adventurer. He saw two green-glowing saucer-sized eyes; heard the wings rattling bonily as they spread to full thirty feet; heard the monster's life-thirsty scream is it plunged. The stars were blotted out. It was upon him.
* * * * *
But even in the sudden confusion of the attack, Carse knew the creature for what it was: a full-grown specimen of the giant carnivorous lemak, a seldom-seen, dying species, too clumsy, too slow, too huge to survive. His ray-gun came around, but he was caught in a feathered maelstrom and knocked too violently around to use it. Without pause the lemak's claws raked his suit. Unable to rend the tough fabric, it resorted to another method. With a strength so enormous that it could overcome the force of the gravity-plates and his forward momentum, the creature tossed him free. Dizzy, he hurtled upward. But he knew that the bird's purpose was to impale him on the long steely spike of its beak as he came twisting down.
The lemak poised below, snout and spear-like beak raised. But it waited in vain, for Carse did not come dropping down. A touch of the control switch and he stayed at the new level, collecting himself. The lemak, puzzled and angry, wheeled up to see what had become of the victim that did not descend, and found instead a searing needle of heat which burnt through its broad right wing. Then, screaming with pain and in a frenzy to escape, it went with a rush into the far darkness.
The Hawk dropped low again, hoping that his gun's quick flash had not been observed. He had not wished to wound the lemak mortally, for no matter how accurate his shot the monster would take long to die, and scream and thrash as it did so. One short spit of orange was preferable to a prolonged hullabaloo. But even that might have betrayed him....
With elaborate caution, he reconnoitered Lar Tantril's ranch.
* * * * *
From above, the ranch clearing was a pool of faint light contained in black leagues of jungle and the edge of the Great Briney. Slanting shadows and the dark bulks of buildings that were unlit rendered the details vague, but under prolonged scrutiny the appointments of the ranch became visible.
The clearing was a circle some two hundred yards in diameter. Just inside the jungle wall was the first line of protection, a steel-barbed, twenty-foot-high fence, its strong corded links interwoven with electrified wires. Well within this fence stood five buildings, low, squat and one-storied, four of them forming a broken square around the central fifth. Two buildings were pierced by low rows of lighted windows, evidence that they were the barracks of the workers; two others, devoted to the processing of the isuan weed, were now dark and silent. The central building was smaller, with window-ports that were glowing eyes in the smooth metal walls. It was the dwelling of the master, Lar Tantril.
Close to the central building rose a hundred-foot tower, topped by the watch-beacon. At three equi-distant points around the encompassing fence, small, square platforms were held sixty feet aloft by mast-like triangular towers, up which foot-rungs led. And on each platform could be made out the figure of a Venusian guard.
Ceaselessly these guards turned and scanned the jungle, the heavens, the unbroken dark prairie of the lake, alert for anything of suspicion. Lar Tantril had good reasons for maintaining a constant watch over his stronghold, and his guards' eyes were sharpened by knowledge of the severe payment laxness would bring. Close at hand in the platforms were knobs which, pressed, would ring a clanging alarm through all the buildings below; and each guard wore two ray-gun holsters.
Despite the guards and the ugly spikes of the fence, however, the ranch from above appeared peaceful, calm and harmless. No men were visible on its shadow-dappled clearing. Even the surrounding jungle, in the watch-beacon's shaded underside, might have been nothing but a stage set, were it not for the occasional signs of the life that crept unseen through it--a long, far-distant howl, a quickly receding crashing in the undergrowth, a thumping from some small animal.
The guards were used to this pattern of nocturnal sounds. It was only when, from a tree not thirty feet from one of the platforms, there came a sudden sharp shaking in the upper branches, that the Venusian on that platform deigned to grip his ray-gun and peer suspiciously. All he saw was a large bird that flapped out and winged across the clearing, mewing angrily.
The guard released his grip on the gun. A snake, probably, had disturbed the bird. Or some of those devilish little crimson bansis, half insect, half crab....
* * * * *
Hawk Carse breathed again. He had been sure his position would be revealed when, drifting with almost imperceptible motion into the tree, the bird had pecked at him, then flapped away in alarm. A long, painfully cautious approach from tree to tree to the selected one had been necessary to the daring scheme of attack he had evolved.
He seemed to be safe. Through a fringe of leaves he saw the guard on the platform glancing elsewhere. Carse steadied himself, rose slightly and again scanned the ranch.
Yes, it looked harmless, but he knew that nothing could be further from the reality. Spaced around the inside edge of that spiky fence were small metal nozzles protruding a few inches from the ground; and on the turning of a control wheel, they would hurl forth a deadly orange swathe, fanning hundreds of feet into the sky. He had tasted their hot breath once when attacking the ranch in his Star Devil. Then there were the long-range projectors whose muzzles studded the central building. And the ray-guns of the tower guards.
These were dangers that he knew, for he had experienced them. What others the ranch held, he could not well surmise. But he saw one significant thing that gave him pause and brought lines to his brow.
The ranch was expecting trouble. Over to one side of the clearing rested a great rounded object, on whose smooth hull gleamed coldly the light from the beacon--Lar Tantril's own personal space-ship--and alongside it a smaller, somewhat similar shape, the ranch's air-car! The space-ship signified that the Venusian chief was present; the air-car, that all his men were gathered in the barracks, and not, as was their custom, in Port o' Porno for a night of revelry!
All waiting--all gathered here--all ready! All grouped for a strong defense! Did it mean what it would appear to--that he, the Hawk, was expected?
He could not know. He could not know if a trap was lying prepared there against his coming. He could but go ahead, and find out.
The only plan of attack he could think of had grown in his mind. Down and up: that was the essence of it: but the details were difficult. He had worked them out as far as he could with typical thoroughness. He had to reach the heart of the fort lying before him: had to reach the central house, Lar Tantril's own. The precious papers would be there, if anywhere.
The Hawk was ready.
He gathered his muscles. His face was cold and hard, his eyes mists of gray. There was no least sign in the man that, in the next few all-deciding minutes, death would lick close to him.
He poised where he was precariously balanced. His ray-gun was in his bare left hand; his face-plate was locked partly open. He raised his fingers to the direction rod on the suit's breast, gazed straight at the guard on the nearest watch-platform and snapped the direction rod out, pointing it at that guard.
* * * * *
What happened then struck so fast, so unexpectedly, that it took only thirty seconds to plunge the quiet ranch into chaos.
The Hawk came like a thunder-bolt, using to its full power his only weapon, the space-suit. The sight of him might alone have been enough to strike terror. From the dark arms of the tree he hurtled, his bloated monstrous shape of metal and fabric dull in the glow of the watch-beacon, and crashed with a clang of metal into the platform he aimed at. Nothing there could withstand him. One second the guard on it was calmly gazing off into the sky: the next, like a nine-pin he was bowled over, to topple heels and head whirling to the ground sixty feet beneath. He lived, he kept consciousness, but he was sorely injured; and he never saw the outlandish projectile that struck him, nor saw it streak to the second watch-platform, bowling its guard out and to the ground likewise, and then repeating at the third and last!
A crash; a pause; a crash; a pause; then a third crash, and the thing of metal had completed the circuit, and all three watch-platforms were scooted empty!
Then came confusion.
There had been screams, but now a crazed voice began crying out mechanically, over and over:
"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit!"
It came from the second guard, who lay twisting on the ground. His tongue, by some trick of nervous disorganization, beat out those words like a voice-disk whose needle keeps skipping its groove--and the effect was macabre.
* * * * *
The central buildings disgorged a crowd of men. Shorty, wiry, thin-faced Venusians, each with skewer-blade strapped to his side and some with ray-guns out, they came scrambling into the open, swearing and wondering. The second guard's insane repetitions directed most of them in his direction; and they piled in a crowd around him. They had no attention for what was happening behind, within the buildings they had emptied. That was what Hawk Carse had planned.
A voice of authority roared up over the general hubbub.
"Rantol! Guard! Rantol, you fool! What happened? What attacked you? Cut that crazy yelling! Answer me!--you, Rantol!"
"Space-suit! Space-suit! Space-suit! Space--"
"Lar Tantril!" A man with suspicious eyes caught the attention of the one who had spoken first. "Space-suit, he says! A flying space-suit! Only Ku Sui has space-suits that fly; or only Ku Sui had them, rather. You know what that must mean!"
He paused, peering at his lord. The coarse yellowy skin of Tantril's brow wrinkled with the thought, then his tusk-like Venusian teeth showed as his lips drew apart in speech.
"Yes!" Lar Tantril said. "It's Carse!"
And he ordered the now silent men around him:
"Circle my house, all of you, your guns ready. You, Esret"--to his second in command--"out gun and come with me."
* * * * *
Even as Lar Tantril spoke, a giant shape was passing clumsily through the kitchen of his house. Carse had entered from the rear, unseen. With gun in hand and eyes sharp he crossed the deserted kitchen with its foul odors of Venusian cookery. Quickly, his metal-shod feet creating an unavoidable racket, he was through a connecting door and into the well-furnished dining room. All was brightly lit; he could easily have been seen through the window-ports rimming each wall; but he counted on the confusion outside to keep the Venusians engaged for several minutes more.
Then he went shuffling into the front room of the house, and saw at once the most likely place.
It was in one corner--a large flat desk, and by it the broad panel of a radio. Scattered over the desk were a number of papers. In seconds Carse was bending over them, scanning and discarding with eyes and hands.
Reports of various quantities of isuan ... orders for stores ... a list that seemed an inventory of weapons--and then the top page of a sheaf covered with familiar, neat, small writing. Yes!
Plans and calculations dealing with a laboratory! And, down in the margin of the first page, the revealing, all-important figure--5,576.34!
He had them--and before Ku Sui! Now, only to get away; out the front door, and up--up from this trap he was in--up into clean and empty space, and then to Leithgow and Friday at Ban Wilson's!
But, as the Hawk turned to go, his eye took in a little slip on the desk, a radio memo, with the name of Ku Sui at its top. Almost without volition he glanced over it, hoping to discover useful information about Ku Sui's asteroid--and with the passing of those few extra seconds his chance for escaping out the door passed too.
Carse's back was partly toward the front door when a voice, hard and deadly, spoke from it:
"Your hands up!"
* * * * *
The adventurer's nerves twanged; he wheeled; and even as he did so another voice bit out from the rear door:
"Yes, up! One move and you're dead!"
And Hawk Carse found himself caught between ray-guns held unswervingly on his body by a man at each door. He was not fool enough to try to shoot, even though his own gun was in his hand; his best speed would be slow-motion in the hampering space-suit. He was fairly caught--because for a few precious seconds he had let his mind slip from the all-important matter of escaping.
At a shout from someone, both doors filled with men, and thin faces appeared at the window-ports. Their ray-guns made an impregnable fence around the netted Hawk.
And then a well-remembered voice, harsh as the man from whom it came, cut through the room.
"Apparently you're caught, Captain Carse!"
The cold gray eyes narrowed, scanned the room, the blocked doors, the barricade of guns held by the grim men at doorways and window-ports.
"Yes," Hawk Carse murmured. "Apparently I am."
* * * * *
Lar Tantril, the Venusian chief, smiled. He was tall for one of his race, even taller than the prisoner he faced. Clad in tight-fitting, iron-gray mesh, he had the characteristic wiry body, thin legs and arms of his kind. Spiky short-cropped hair grew like steel slivers from the narrow dome of his long hatchet head, and the taut-stretched skin of his face was burned a deep hard brown. He looked what he was: a bold and unscrupulous leader of his men.
"The gun in your belt," he said, "--drop it. Right on the floor. There--better. I like you not with a gun near your hand, Carse."
The Hawk regarded him frigidly.
"And now what?" he asked.
Lar Tantril continued smiling. His ray-gun did not move for an instant from the line it held on the metal and fabric giant. He said at a tangent, quite pleasantly:
"Think fast, Captain Carse--think fast! Isn't that one of Dr. Ku's new suits?--a little space-ship all your own? Why not plan a sudden sweep for that door in an attempt to crash through my men and get free up in the air--eh?"
"Why not?" said the Hawk.
"It might be possible," Tantril continued, "with your luck. Unless something went wrong with your helmet gravity-plates."
At this the Venusian's gun moved. Deliberately it came up and aimed at the crown of the adventurer's helmet. Tantril squeezed the trigger.
Spang!
A pencil-thin streak of orange stabbed between Venusian and Earthling; sparks hissed out where it struck the tip of the helmet; and for an instant life and strength seemed to leave the grotesquely clad figure. Carse slumped down under a quick crushing weight. Weight! It bent him low, and it was only with a great effort that he was able to straighten again. For the suit's full load of metal and fabric was upon him now, its enormous boots binding him to the ground since their weight was unrelieved by the partial lift of the helmet plates. An inch-wide, black-rimmed hole in the mechanism above the helmet told what had happened.
Lar Tantril chortled, and his men, most of them only half comprehending what he had done, echoed him.
"But even yet you've got a chance," the Venusian went on. "There's another set of plates in the boot-soles, for attraction. If you got a chance to stand on your head outside, you'd be gone! So--"
* * * * *
This time he lowered the gun, and carefully, accurately, he sent two spitting streams of orange through the soles of the great boots.
The danger Carse had feared had come to pass. His one weapon had been destroyed. He was worse than helpless; he was in a cumbersome prison, all power of quick movement gone. He was a paralyzed giant, tied to the soil, the ways of the air hopelessly closed. The slightest step would cost great effort.
"You have protected yourself well, Lar Tantril," he said slowly.
Now Tantril laughed deeply and unrestrainedly. "Yes, and by Mother Venus," he cried, "it's good to see you this way, Carse, unarmed and in my power!" He turned to his circle of men and said: "Poor Hawk! Can't fly any more! I've put him in a cage! So thoughtful of him to bring his cage along with him so I could trap him inside it! His own cage!" He guffawed, shaking, and the others laughed loud.
Through it all Hawk Carse stood motionless, his face cold and graven, his slender body bent under the burden of the dead suit. He still held in his right hand, limp by his side, the sheaf of papers and their all-important figure--and the thumb and forefinger of his hand were moving, so slowly as to be hardly noticeable, in what seemed to be a lone sign of nervous tension.
"You know, Carse," Tantril observed after his laugh, "I've been half expecting you, though I don't see how you knew I was the one who took those papers you're holding. Dr. Ku radioed me, you see. I think you were reading his message at the time I entered. Did you finish it?"
"No," said the Hawk.
"You'll find it interesting. Let me read it to you." And Tantril took up the memo.
"From Ku Sui to Lar Tantril: Search House No. 574 in Port o' Porno closely for anything pertinent to Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow or giving clue to his whereabouts. Keep what you obtain for me; I will come to your ranch in five days. Watch for Hawk Carse, Eliot Leithgow and a Negro, arriving from space at Satellite III in self-propulsive space-suits." There followed some details concerning the suits' mechanism; then: "Carse caused me certain trouble and came near hurting my major inventions. I want him badly."
* * * * *
At this the adventurer's face tightened; his gray eyes went frosty. All he and Leithgow had deduced, then, was true. Dr. Ku had survived the crashing of the asteroid's dome. The mechanisms had also survived--and certainly the coordinated brains--the brains he, Hawk Carse, had promised to destroy! Now trapped, it seemed that promise could never be fulfilled....
Yet even through this torturing thought of a promise unkept, the Hawk's thumb and forefinger moved in their slight grinding motion on the first sheet of the sheaf of papers....
Lar Tantril reached out his hand for the sheaf. "So, obeying Dr. Ku's orders, I had the house searched and got these papers. They, must be valuable, Carse, since you wanted them so badly. Ku Sui will be pleased. Hand them over."
With but the barest flick of gray eyes downward. Hawk Carse gave the sheaf to Tantril.
But his brief glance at the top-most sheet told him all he wanted to know. Gradually, methodically, the motion of thumb and forefinger had totally effaced the revealing figure 5,576.34, the one clue to the location of Leithgow's laboratory. Enough! What he had set out to do was finished. The chief task was achieved!
"And now, perhaps," Lar Tantril chuckled, "a little entertainment."
His men pricked up their ears. This language was more understandable. Entertainment meant playing with the prisoner--torture. And alkite, probably, and isuan. A night of revelry!
But Hawk Carse smiled thinly at this.
"Entertainment, Tantril?" his cold voice said. He paused, and then added slowly: "What a fool you are!"
* * * * *
Lar Tantril was not annoyed by the words. He only laughed and slapped his thigh.
"Yes?" he mocked. "Truly, Captain Carse, you must be frightened, to try and anger me so I'll shoot! Do you fear a skewer-blade so much? We would leave most of you for Ku Sui!"
Carse shook his head. "No, Lar Tantril, I don't want you to shoot me. I'm telling you you're a fool--because you think me one."
With a wave of his hands the Venusian protested: "No, no, not at all. You're infernally clever, Carse. I'll always be the first to admit it."
"Then do you think I'd attack your ranch alone?"
"You'd like me to believe you have friends hidden somewhere?" Tantril asked, smiling tolerantly.
Carse's voice came back curtly. "Believe what you like, but learn this: It's your boast that your ranch is impregnable, guarded on every side and from every angle. I'm telling you it's not. Its vulnerable. It's wide open to one way of attack and my friends and I know it well."
For a second the Venusian's assurance wavered.
"Vulnerable?" he said. "Open to attack? You're just stalling!"
Whip-like words cut through.
"Wait and see. Wait till the ranch is stormed and wiped out. Wait twenty minutes! Only twenty!"
Hawk Carse was always listened to when he spoke in such manner. Lar Tantril stared at the hard gray eyes boring into his.
"Why do you tell me this?" he asked. Then, with a smile: "Why not wait until my ranch is wiped out, as you say?" His smile broadened. "Until these hidden friends attack?"
"Simply because I must insure my living. Nothing my friends could do would prevent your having plenty of time to kill me before you yourselves were destroyed. I think, under the circumstances, you would kill me. And I must go free. I have made a promise. A very important promise. I must be free to carry it out."
"Just what are you aiming at?"
"I'm offering," said the Hawk, "to show you where your fort is vulnerable--in time for you to protect it. I'll do this if you'll let me go free. You need not release me till afterwards."
* * * * *
Lar Tantril's mouth fell half open at this surprising turn. He was unquestionably taken aback. But he snapped his lips shut and considered the offer. A trick? Carse was famed for them. A trap? But how? He scanned his men. Fifty to one; fifty ray-guns on an unarmed man helpless in a hampering prison of metal and fabric. If a trap, Carse could not possibly escape death. But yet....
Tantril walked over to his man Esret, and, stepping apart, they conferred in whispers.
"Is he trying to trick us?" the chief asked.
"I don't see how he can hope to. He can hardly move in that suit. It ties him down. We could keep tight guard upon him. He couldn't possibly get away. And at the slightest sign of something shady--"
"Yes; but you know him."
"What he says is sensible. Naturally he wants to live. He knows we'll shoot him if he tries to trick us, and he knows we'll do it if we're attacked! We'll of course leave men at all defensive stations. If there is a weakness here, if the ranch is vulnerable--we should learn what it is. It'll cost us nothing. We can't lose, and we might be saving everything. Of course we won't let him go afterwards."
Tantril considered a moment longer, then said:
"Yes, I think you are right."
He turned back to the waiting Carse.
"Agreed," he said. "Show this vulnerable point to us and you'll be released. But no false moves! One sign of treachery and you're dead!"
The Hawk's strong-cut face showed no change. It was only inwardly that he smiled.
* * * * *
Their very manner of accompanying him showed their respect for the slender adventurer.
He had no gun; he was stooped by the unrelieved weight of the massive helmet, the suit itself and the chunky blocks of metal which were the boots; his every dragging step was that of a man shackled by chains--but he was Hawk Carse! And so, as he shuffled out through the front door of the house and lumbered with painful effort across the clearing, he was surrounded by a glitter of ray-guns held by the close-pressing circle of men. Tantril's own gun kept steady on his broad fabric-clad back, and of its proximity he kept reminding Carse.
New guards were already on watch on each of the three watch-platforms, their eyes sweeping around the clearing and the jungle and the dark stretch of the lake, and often returning to the crowd which marked the stumbling giant's progress below. Each point of defense was manned. In the ranch's central control room, a steel-sheathed cubby in the basement of Tantril's house, men stood watchful, their hands ready at the wheels and levers which commanded the ranch's ray-batteries, their eyes on the vision-screen which gave to this unseen heart of the place a panoramic view of what was transpiring above. And all waited on what the grotesque, bloated figure they watched might reveal.
Watch--watch--watch. A hundred eyes, below, above, beside the Hawk, were centered and alert on each move of his clumsy progress. The barrels of two-score ray-guns transfixed him. Under such guard he arrived at the ranch's fence where it approached the Great Briney.
"Open the gate," said the Hawk curtly. "It's down there."
He pointed to where the lake's pebbled beach shelved downward to the tiny murmurous waves, a ten-foot stretch of ghostly white between the guarding fence and the water.
"Down there?" repeated Tantril slowly. "Down to the lake?"
"Yes!" Carse snapped irritably. "Well, will you open the gate? I'm very tired: I can't bear this suit much longer."
* * * * *
Lar Tantril conferred uneasily with Esret, while his men cast shivering glances out over the dark wind-rippled plain of the lake. But no enemy showed there. The beach was clear for fifty yards on each side.
"By Iapetus!" the adventurer complained harshly, "are you children, to be afraid of the dark? Tantril, put your gun into me, and shoot if I try anything suspicious! Open the gate!"
Finally the lock was unfastened and the gate swung out. Tantril stationed a man there, ready to close and lock it in case of need, and then, Hawk Carse, still surrounded by the alert Venusians, shuffled down to the edge of the water.
Over the Great Briney was silence. No shape broke its calm. The air held only the nervous whispers of the crowd and the scrape and crunch of the lone Earthling's dragging boots as they made wide furrows in the hard pebbly soil of the beach.
The men had fallen back a little, and now were a half circle around him down to the water's brink. The watch-beacon's light caught them full there, and threw great blots of shadows lakeward from them. Their ray-guns were gripped tighter as their shifty eyes darted from his huge bulk to the water ahead, and back. Doubt and fear swayed them all.
The Hawk wasted no time, but stepped out to knee-high level on the sharply shelving bottom. At this Tantril objected.
"Hold, Carse!" he roared. "You play for time, I think! Where is this point of attack?"
The bloated figure did not answer him, but bent over as if searching for something under the tiny waves which now were slapping his thigh. He reached one hand down and probed around with it, apparently feeling. The eyes watching him were wide and fear-fascinated.
* * * * *
"Here--or no," the Hawk muttered to himself, though a dozen could hear him. "A little farther, I think.... Here--but no, I forgot: the tide has come in. A little farther...." He stopped suddenly and straightened, turned to the Venusian chief. "Don't forget. Lar Tantril, you have promised I can go free!"
Then he resumed his search of the bottom, the black surface of water up to his waist. Again the fearful Venusian leader roared an objection:
"You're tricking us. Carse, you little devil--"
"Oh, don't be an ass!" Carse snapped back. "As if I could get away--your ray-guns on me!"
Another half minute passed; a few more short steps were taken. A muttered oath came from one of the wet, uncomfortable men in the grip of fear. Several there were on the brink of turning in, a panicky dash for the safety of the enclosure behind, the warm buildings, guarded by ray-batteries--and yet an awful fascination held them. What metallic horror of the deeps was being exposed?
"Just a second, now," the Hawk was murmuring. "You'll all see.... Somewhere ... right ... here ... somewhere...."
He held them taut, expectant. The water licked around the waist of his suit. One more slow step; one more yet.
"Here!" he cried triumphantly, and clicked his face-plate closed. And the men who stared, faces pale, hearts pounding, ray-guns at the ready, saw him no longer. The water had closed over that shiny metal helmet. Only a mocking ripple was left.
Hawk Carse was gone!
* * * * *
Gone!--and laughing to himself.
The space-suit, his heavy prison of metal and fabric, would protect him from water as well as from space! It offered his golden--his only--opportunity. It had been pierced by Tantril's shots, back in the house, but only the gravity-plate compartments, which were sealed and separate. It was still--after he had closed the mittens--air-tight, an effective little submarine in the dark waters of the Great Briney!
So Carse followed his black course over the lake-bottom laughing and laughing. In his mind he could see what he had left behind: the men, shivering there in the water for an instant, completely befogged, and perhaps firing one or two shots at where he had disappeared; then turning and breaking back in a grand rush for the fence and safety. And the ray-batteries, all manned and centered on the lake; Tantril, in a very fury of rage, but fearful, preparing for a siege; preparing for anything that might loom suddenly from the water! And all of them wondering what lay beneath its calm surface; what he, Hawk Carse, had gone to join!
For days they would stare fearfully at the lake, while the tides rolled steadily in and out; for days the ray-batteries would be held ready, and none would venture outside the fence. It might take hours for the realization of his trick to sink in--but they still would not be sure of anything, and would have to keep vigilant against the still-possible attack.
Fourteen miles up the coast was Ban Wilson's ranch, and Eliot Leithgow and Friday waiting there. He would rest for a while, and then the three of them would go home to the laboratory--whose location was now still secret. And then, later, there was his promise to the coordinated brains to be kept....
But that was in the future. For the present, he went his dark, watery way, laughing. Laughing and laughing again....
Yes, John Sewell, first of all Hawk Carse's traits was his resourcefulness!
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET
by Tom Godwin
The problem of separating the friends from the enemies was a major one in the conquest of space as many a dead spacer could have testified. A tough job when you could see an alien and judge appearances; far tougher when they were only whispers on the wind.
* * * * *
A smile of friendship is a baring of the teeth. So is a snarl of menace. It can be fatal to mistake the latter for the former.
Harm an alien being only under circumstances of self-defense.
TRUST NO ALIEN BEING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.
--From Exploration Ship's Handbook.
He listened in the silence of the Exploration ship's control room. He heard nothing but that was what bothered him; an ominous quiet when there should have been a multitude of sounds from the nearby village for the viewscreen's audio-pickups to transmit. And it was more than six hours past the time when the native, Throon, should have come to sit with him outside the ship as they resumed the laborious attempt to learn each other's language.
The viewscreen was black in the light of the control room, even though it was high noon outside. The dull red sun was always invisible through the world's thick atmosphere and to human eyes full day was no more than a red-tinged darkness.
He switched on the ship's outside floodlights and the viewscreen came to bright white life, showing the empty glades reaching away between groves of purple alien trees. He noticed, absently, that the trees seemed to have changed a little in color since his arrival.
The village was hidden from view by the outer trees but there should have been some activity in the broad area visible to him. There was none, not even along the distant segment of what should have been a busy road. The natives were up to something and he knew, from hard experience on other alien worlds, that it would be nothing good. It would be another misunderstanding of some kind and he didn't know enough of their incomprehensible language to ask them what it was--
* * * * *
Suddenly, as it always came, he felt someone or something standing close behind him and peering over his shoulder. He dropped his hand to the blaster he had taken to wearing at all times and whirled.
Nothing was behind him. There never was. The control room was empty, with no hiding place for anything, and the door was closed, locked by the remote-control button beside him. There was nothing.
The sensation of being watched faded, as though the watcher had withdrawn to a greater distance. It was perhaps the hundredth time within six days that he had felt the sensation. And when he slept at night something came to nuzzle at his mind; faceless, formless, utterly alien. For the past three nights he had not let the blaster get beyond quick reach of his hand, even when in bed.
But whatever it was, it could not be on the ship. He had searched the ship twice, a methodical compartment-by-compartment search that had found nothing. It had to be the work of the natives from outside the ship. Except....
Why, if the natives were telepathic, did the one called Throon go through the weary pretense of trying to learn a mutually understandable form of communication?
There was one other explanation, which he could not accept: that he was following in the footsteps of Will Garret of Ship Nine who had deliberately gone into a white sun two months after the death of his twin brother.
He looked at the chair beside his own, Johnny's chair, which would forever be empty, and his thoughts went back down the old, bitter paths. The Exploration Board had been wrong when they thought the close bond between identical twins would make them the ideal two-man crews for the lonely, lifetime journeys of the Exploration Ships. Identical twins were too close; when one of them died, the other died in part with him.
They had crossed a thousand light-years of space together, he and Johnny, when they came to the bleak planet that he would name Johnny's World. He should never have let Johnny go alone up the slope of the honey-combed mountain--but Johnny had wanted to take the routine record photographs of the black, tiger-like beasts which they had called cave cats and the things had seemed harmless and shy, despite their ferocious appearance.
"I'm taking them a sack of food that I think they might like," Johnny had said. "I want to try to get some good close-up shots of them."
Ten minutes later he heard the distant snarl of Johnny's blaster. He ran up the mountainside, knowing already that he was too late. He found two of the cave cats lying where Johnny had killed them. Then he found Johnny, at the foot of a high cliff. He was dead, his neck broken by the fall. Scattered all around him from the torn sack was the food he had wanted to give to the cats.
He buried Johnny the next day, while a cold wind moaned under a lead-gray sky. He built a monument for him; a little mound of frosty stones that only the wild animals would ever see--
* * * * *
A chime rang, high and clear, and the memories were shattered. The orange light above the hyperspace communicator was flashing; the signal that meant the Exploration Board was calling him from Earth.
He flipped the switch and said, "Paul Jameson, Exploration Ship One."
The familiar voice of Brender spoke:
"It's been some time since your preliminary report. Is everything all right?"
"In a way," he answered. "I was going to give you the detailed report tomorrow."
"Give me a brief sketch of it now."
"Except for their short brown fur, the natives are humanoid in appearance. But there are basic differences. Their body temperature is cool, like their climate. Their vision range is from just within the visible red on into the infrared. They'll shade their eyes from the light of anything as hot as boiling water but they'll look square into the ship's floodlights and never see them."
"And their knowledge of science?" Brender asked.
"They have a good understanding of it, but along lines entirely different from what our own were at their stage of development. For example: they power their machines with chemicals but there is no steam, heat, or exhaust."
"That's what we want to find--worlds where branches of research unknown to our science are being explored. How about their language?"
"No progress with it yet." He told Brender of the silence in the village and added, "Even if Throon should show up I could not ask him what was wrong. I've learned a few words but they have so many different definitions that I can't use them."
"I know," Brender said. "Variable and unrelated definitions, undetectable shades of inflection--and sometimes a language that has no discernibly separate words. The Singer brothers of Ship Eight ran into the latter. We've given them up as lost."
"The Singers--dead?" he exclaimed. "Good God--it's been only a month since the Ramon brothers were killed."
"The circumstances were similar," Brender said. "They always are. There is no way the Exploration men can tell the natives that they mean them no harm and the suspicion of the natives grows into dangerous hostility. The Singers reported the natives on that world to be both suspicious and possessing powerful weapons. The Singers were proceeding warily, their own weapons always at hand. But, somehow, the natives caught them off-guard--their last report was four months ago."
There was a silence, then Brender added, "Their ship was the ninth--and we had only fifteen."
He did not reply to the implications of Brender's statement. It was obvious to them all what the end of the Plan would be. What it had to be.
* * * * *
It had been only three years since the fifteen heavily armed Exploration ships set out to lead the way for Terran expansion across the galaxy; to answer a cry from far planets, and to find all the worlds that held intelligent life. That was the ultimate goal of the Plan: to accumulate and correlate all the diverse knowledge of all the intelligent life-forms in the galaxy. Among the achievements resulting from that tremendous mass of data would be a ship's drive faster even than hyperspace; the Third Level Drive which would bring all the galaxies of the universe within reach.
And now nine ships were gone out of fifteen and nineteen men out of thirty....
"The communication barrier," Brender said. "The damned communication barrier has been the cause behind the loss of every ship. And there is nothing we can do about it. We're stymied by it...."
The conversation was terminated shortly afterward and he moved about the room restlessly, wishing it was time to lift ship again. With Johnny not there the dark world was like a smothering tomb. He would like to leave it behind and drive again into the star clouds of the galaxy; drive on and on into them--
A ghostly echo touched his mind; restless, poignantly yearning. He swung to face the locked door, knowing there could be nothing behind it. The first real fear came to him as he did so. The thing was lonely--the thing that watched him was as lonely as he was....
What else could any of it be but the product of a mind in the first stage of insanity?
* * * * *
The natives came ten minutes later.
The viewscreen showed their chemically-powered vehicle emerge from the trees and roll swiftly across the glade. Four natives were in it while a fifth one lay on the floor, apparently badly injured.
The vehicle stopped a short distance in front of the airlock and he recognized the native on the floor. It was Throon, the one with whom he had been exchanging language lessons.
They were waiting for him when he emerged from the ship, pistol-like weapons in their belts and grim accusation in their manner.
Throon was muttering unintelligibly, unconscious. His skin, where not covered by the brown fur, was abnormal in appearance. He was dying.
The leader of the four indicated Throon and said in a quick, brittle voice: "Ko reegar feen no-dran!"
Only one word was familiar: Ko, which meant "you" and "yesterday" and a great many other things. The question was utterly meaningless to him.
He dropped his hand a little nearer his blaster as the leader spoke again; a quick succession of unknown words that ended with a harshly demanding "kreson!"
Kreson meant "now," or "very quickly." All the other words were unfamiliar to him. They waited, the grim menace about them increasing when he did not answer. He tried in vain to find some way of explaining to them he was not responsible for Throon's sickness and could not cure it.
Then he saw the spray of leaves that had caught on the corner of the vehicle when it came through the farther trees.
They were of a deep purple color. All the trees around the ship were almost gray by contrast.
Which meant that he was responsible for Throon's condition.
The cold white light of the ship's floodlights, under which he and Throon had sat for day after day, contained radiations that went through the violet and far into the ultraviolet. To the animal and vegetable life of the dark world such radiations were invisibly short and deadly.
Throon was dying of hard-radiation sickness.
It was something he should have foreseen and avoided--and that would not have happened had he accepted old Throon's pantomimed invitation, in the beginning, to go with him into the village to work at the language study. There he would have used a harmless battery lamp for illumination ... but there was no certainty that the natives were not planning to lay a trap for him in the village and he had refused to go.
It did not matter--there was a complex radiation-neutralizer and cell-reconstructor in the ship which would return Throon to full, normal health a few hours after he was placed in its chamber.
He turned to the leader of the four natives and motioned from Throon to the airlock. "Go--there," he said in the native language.
"Bron!" the leader answered. The word meant "No" and there was a determination in the way he said it that showed he would not move from it.
At the end of five minutes his attempts to persuade them to take Throon into the ship had increased their suspicion of his motives to the point of critical danger. If only he could tell them why he wanted Throon taken into the ship ... But he could not and would have to take Throon by first disposing of the four without injuring them. This he could do by procuring one of the paralyzing needle-guns from the ship.
He took a step toward the ship and spoke the words that to the best of his knowledge meant: "I come back."
"Feswin ilt k'la."
Their reply was to snatch at their weapons in desperate haste, even as the leader uttered a hoarse word of command. He brought up the blaster with the quick motion that long training had perfected and their weapons were only half drawn when his warning came:
"Bron!"
* * * * *
They froze, but did not release their weapons. He walked backward to the airlock, his blaster covering them, the tensely waiting manner in which they watched his progress telling him that the slightest relaxation of his vigilance would mean his death. He did not let the muzzle of the blaster waver until he was inside the airlock and the outer door had slid shut.
He was sure that the natives would be gone when he returned. And he was sure of another thing: That whatever he had said to them, it was not what he had thought he was saying.
He saw that the glade was empty when he opened the airlock again. At the same time a bomb-like missile struck the ship just above the airlock and exploded with a savage crash. He jabbed the Close button and the door clicked shut barely in advance of three more missiles which hammered at its impervious armor.
So that, he thought wearily, is that.
He laid the useless needle-gun aside. The stage was past when he could hope to use it. He could save Throon only by killing some of the others--or he could lift ship and leave Throon to die. Either action would make the natives hate and fear Terrans; a hatred and fear that would be there to greet all future Terran ships.
That was not the way a race gave birth to peaceful galactic empire, was not the purpose behind the Plan. But always, wherever the Exploration men went, they encountered the deadly barrier; the intangible, unassailable communication barrier. With the weapons an Exploration man carried in his ship he had the power to destroy a world--but not the power to ask the simple questions that would prevent fatal misunderstandings.
And before another three years had passed the last Exploration man would die, the last Exploration ship would be lost.
He felt the full force of hopelessness for the first time. When Johnny had been alive it had been different; Johnny, who had laughed whenever the outlook was the darkest and said, "We'll find a way, Paul--"
The thought broke as suddenly, unexpectedly, he felt that Johnny was very near. With the feeling came the soft enclosure of a dream-like peace in which Johnny's death was vague and faraway; only something that had happened in another dream. He knew, without wondering why, that Johnny was in the control room.
A part of his mind tried to reject the thought as an illusion. He did not listen--he did not want to listen. He ran to the ship's elevator, stumbling like one not fully awake. Johnny was waiting for him in the control room--alive--alive--
* * * * *
He spoke as he stepped into the control room:
"Johnny--"
Something moved at the control board, black and alien, standing tall as a man on short hind legs. Yellow eyes blazed in a feline face.
It was a cave cat, like the ones that had killed Johnny.
Realization was a wrenching shock and a terrible disillusionment. Johnny was not waiting for him--not alive--
He brought up the blaster, the dream-like state gone. The paw of the cave cat flashed out and struck the ship's master light switch with a movement faster than his own. The room was instantly, totally, dark.
He fired and pale blue fire lanced across the room, to reveal that the cave cat was gone. He fired again, quickly and immediately in front of him. The pale beam revealed only the ripped metal floor.
"I am not where you think."
The words spoke clearly in his mind but there was no directional source. He held his breath, listening for the whisper of padded feet as the cave cat flashed in for the kill, and made a swift analysis of the situation.
The cave cat was telepathic and highly intelligent and had been on the ship all the time. It and the others had wanted the ship and had killed Johnny to reduce opposition to the minimum. He, himself, had been permitted to live until the cave cat learned from his mind how to operate the almost-automatic controls. Now, he had served his purpose--
"You are wrong."
Again there was no way he could determine the direction from which the thought came. He listened again, and wondered why it had not waylaid him at the door.
Its thought came:
"I had to let you see me or you would not have believed I existed. It was only here that I could extinguish all lights and have time to speak before you killed me. I let you think your brother was here...." There was a little pause. "I am sorry. I am sorry. I should have used some other method of luring you here."
He swung the blaster toward what seemed to be a faint sound near the astrogator unit across the room.
"We did not intend to kill your brother."
He did not believe it and did not reply.
"When we made first telepathic contact with him, he jerked up his blaster and fired. In his mind was the conviction that we had pretended to be harmless animals so that we could catch him off-guard and kill him. One of us leaped at him as he fired the second time, to knock the blaster from his hand. We needed only a few minutes in which to explain--but he would not trust us that long. There was a misjudgment of distance and he was knocked off the cliff."
Again he did not reply.
"We did not intend to kill your brother," the thought came, "but you do not believe me."
* * * * *
He spoke for the first time. "No, I don't believe you. You are physically like cats and cats don't misjudge distances. Now, you want something from me before you try to kill me, too. What is it?"
"I will have to tell you of my race for you to understand. We call ourselves the Varn, in so far as it can be translated into a spoken word, and we are a very old race. In the beginning we did not live in caves but there came a long period of time, for thousands of years, when the climate on our world was so violent that we were forced to live in the caves. It was completely dark there but our sense of smell became very acute, together with sufficient sensitivity to temperature changes that we could detect objects in our immediate vicinity. There were subterranean plants in the caves and food was no problem."
* * * * *
"We had always been slightly telepathic and it was during our long stay in the caves that our intelligence and telepathic powers became fully developed. We had only our minds--physical science is not created in dark caves with clumsy paws.
"The time finally came when we could leave the caves but it was of little help to us. There were no resources on our world but earth and stone and the thin grass of the plains. We wondered about the universe and we knew the stars were distant suns because one of our own suns became a star each winter. We studied as best we could but we could see the stars only as the little wild animals saw them. There was so much we wanted to learn and by then we were past our zenith and already dying out. But our environment was a prison from which we could never escape.
"When your ship arrived we thought we might soon be free. We wanted to ask you to take some of us with you and arrange for others of your race to stop by on our world. But you dismissed us as animals, useful only for making warm fur coats, because we lived in caves and had no science, no artifacts--nothing. You had the power to destroy us and we did not know what your reaction would be when you learned we were intelligent and telepathic. A telepathic race must have a high code of ethics and never intrude unwanted--but would you have believed that?"
He did not answer.
"The death of your brother changed everything. You were going to leave so soon that there would be no time to learn more about you. I hid on the ship so I could study you and wait until I could prove to you that you needed me. Now, I can--Throon is dying and I can give you the proper words of explanation that will cause the others to bring him into the ship."
"Your real purpose--what is it?" he asked.
"To show you that men need the Varn. You want to explore the galaxy, and learn. So do the Varn. You have the ships and we have the telepathic ability that will end the communication problem. Your race and mine can succeed only if we go together."
He searched for the true, and hidden, purpose behind the Varn proposal and saw what it would have to be.
"The long-range goal--you failed to mention that ... your ultimate aim."
"I know what you are thinking. How can I prove you wrong--now?"
There was no way for the Varn to prove him wrong, nor for him to prove the treachery behind the Varn proposal. The proof would come only with time, when the Terran-Varn co-operation had transformed Terrans into a slave race.
The Varn spoke again. "You refuse to believe I am sincere?"
"I would be a naive fool to believe you."
"It will be too late to save Throon unless we act very quickly. I have told you why I am here. There is nothing more I can do to convince you but be the first to show trust. When I switch on the lights it will be within your power to kill me."
* * * * *
The Varn was gambling its life in a game in which he would be gambling the Plan and his race. It was a game he would end at the first sound of movement from the astrogator unit across the room....
"I have been here beside you all the time."
A furry paw brushed his face, claws flicked gently but grimly reminding along his throat.
He whirled and fired. He was too late--the Varn had already leaped silently away and the beam found only the bare floor. Then the lights came on, glaringly bright after the darkness, and he saw the Varn.
It was standing by the control board, its huge yellow eyes watching him. He brought the blaster into line with it, his finger on the firing stud. It waited, not moving or shrinking from what was coming. The translucent golden eyes looked at him and beyond him, as though they saw something not in the room. He wondered if it was in contact with its own kind on Johnny's World and was telling them it had made the gamble for high stakes, and had lost.
It was not afraid--not asking for mercy....
The killing of it was suddenly an act without savor. It was something he would do in the immediate future but first he would let it live long enough to save Throon.
He motioned with the blaster and said, "Lead the way to the airlock."
"And afterward--you will kill me?"
"Lead the way," he repeated harshly.
It said no more but went obediently past him and trotted down the corridor like a great, black dog.
* * * * *
He stood in the open airlock, the Varn against the farther wall where he had ordered it to stand. Throon was in the radiation chamber and he had held his first intelligible conversation with the natives that day.
The Varn was facing into the red-black gloom outside the lighted airlock, where the departing natives could be heard crossing the glade. "Their thoughts no longer hold fear and suspicion," it said. "The misunderstanding is ended."
He raised the muzzle of the blaster in his hand. The black head lifted and the golden eyes looked up at him.
"I made you no promise," he said.
"I could demand none."
"I can't stop to take you back to your own world and I can't leave you alive on this one--with what you've learned from my mind you would have the natives build the Varn a disintegrator-equipped space fleet equal to our own ships."
"We want only to go with you."
He told it what he wanted it to know before he killed it, wondering why he should care:
"I would like to believe you are sincere--and you know why I don't dare to. Trusting a telepathic race would be too dangerous. The Varn would know everything we knew and only the Varn would be able to communicate with each new alien race. We would have to believe what the Varn told us--we would have to trust the Varn to see for us and speak for us and not deceive us as we went across the galaxy. And then, in the end, Terrans would no longer be needed except as a subject race. They would be enslaved.
"We would have laid the groundwork for an empire--the Varn Empire."
There was a silence, in which his words hung like something cold and invisible between them.
Then the Varn asked, very quietly:
"Why is the Plan failing?"
"You already know," he said. "Because of the barrier--the communication barrier that causes aliens to misunderstand the intentions of Exploration men and fear them."
"There is no communication barrier between you and I--yet you fear me and are going to kill me."
"I have to kill you. You represent a danger to my race."
"Isn't that the same reason why aliens kill Exploration men?"
He did not answer and its thought came, quickly, "How does an Exploration man appear to the natives of alien worlds?"
How did he appear?... He landed on their world in a ship that could smash it into oblivion; he stepped out of his ship carrying weapons that could level a city; he represented irresistible power for destruction and he trusted no one and nothing.
And in return he hoped to find welcome and friendship and co-operation....
"There," the Varn said, "is your true barrier--your own distrust and suspicion. You, yourselves, create it on each new world. Now you are going to erect it between my race and yours by killing me and advising the Exploration Board to quarantine my world and never let another ship land there."
Again there was a silence as he thought of what the Varn had said and of what it had said earlier: "We are a very old race...." There was wisdom in the Varn's analysis of the cause of the Plan's failure and with the Varn to vanquish the communication stalemate, the new approach could be tried. They could go a long way together, men and Varn, a long, long way....
Or they could create the Varn Empire ... and how could he know which it would be?
How could anyone know--except the telepathic Varn?
The muzzle of the blaster had dropped and he brought it back up. He forced the dangerous indecision aside, knowing he would have to kill the Varn at once or he might weaken again, and said harshly to it:
"The risk is too great. I want to believe you--but all your talk of trust and good intentions is only talk and my race would be the only one that had to trust."
He touched the firing stud as the last thought of the Varn came:
"Let me speak once more."
He waited, the firing stud cold and metallic under his finger.
"You are wrong. We have already set the example of faith in you by asking to go with you. I told you we did not intend to hurt your brother and I told you we saw the stars only as the little wild animals saw them. The years in the dark caves--you do not understand--"
The eyes of the Varn looked into his and beyond him; beautiful, expressionless, like polished gold.
"The Varn are blind."
THE END
THE SECOND SATELLITE
By Edmond Hamilton
Earth-men war on frog-vampires for the emancipation of the human cows of Earth's second satellite.
Norman and Hackett, bulky in their thick flying suits, seemed to fill the little office. Across the room Harding, the field superintendent, contemplated them. Two planes were curving up into the dawn together from the field outside, their motors thunderous as they roared over the building. When their clamor had receded, Harding spoke:
"I don't know which of you two is crazier," he said. "You, Norman, to propose a fool trip like this, or you, Hackett, to go with him."
Hackett grinned, but the long, lean face of Norman was earnest. "No doubt it all sounds a little insane," he said, "but I'm convinced I'm right."
The field superintendent shook his head. "Norman, you ought to be writing fiction instead of flying. A second satellite--and Fellows and the others on it--what the devil!"
"What other theory can account for their disappearance?" asked Norman calmly. "You know that since the new X-type planes were introduced, hundreds of fliers all over Earth have been trying for altitude records in them. Twenty-five miles--thirty--thirty-five--the records have been broken every day. But out of the hundreds of fliers who have gone up to those immense heights, four have never come down nor been seen again!
"One vanished over northern Sweden, one over Australia, one over Lower California, and one, Fellows, himself, right here over Long Island. You saw the globe on which I marked those four spots, and you saw that when connected they formed a perfect circle around the Earth. The only explanation is that the four fliers when they reached a forty-mile height were caught up by some body moving round Earth in that circular orbit, some unknown moon circling Earth inside its atmosphere, a second satellite of Earth's whose existence has until now never been suspected!"
* * * * *
Harding shook his head again. "Norman, your theory would be all right if it were not for the cold fact that no such satellite has ever been glimpsed."
"Can you glimpse a bullet passing you?" Norman retorted. "The two fliers at Sweden and Lower California vanished within three hours of each other, on opposite sides of the Earth. That means that this second satellite, as I've computed, circles Earth once every six hours, and travelling at that terrific speed it is no more visible to us of Earth than a rifle bullet would be."
"Moving through Earth's atmosphere at such speed, indeed, one would expect it to burn up by its own friction with the air. But it does not, because its own gravitational power would draw to itself enough air to make a dense little atmosphere for itself that would cling to it and shield it as it speeds through Earth's upper air. No, I'm certain that this second satellite exists, Harding, and I'm as certain that it's responsible for the vanishing of those four fliers."
"And now you and Hackett have figured when it will be passing over here and are going up in an X-type yourselves to look for it," Harding said musingly.
"Look for it?" echoed Hackett. "We're not going to climb forty miles just to get a look at the damn thing--we're going to try landing on it!"
"You're crazy sure!" the field superintendent exploded. "If Fellows and those others got caught by the thing and never came down again, why in the name of all that's holy would you two want--" He stopped suddenly. "Oh, I think I see," he said, awkwardly. "Fellows was rather a buddy of you two, wasn't he?"
"The best that ever flew a crippled Nieuport against three Fokkers to pull us out of a hole," said Norman softly. "Weeks he's been gone, and if it had been Hackett and I he'd be all over the sky looking for us--the damned lunatic. Well, we're not going to let him down."
"I see," Harding repeated. Then--"Well, here comes your mechanic, Norman, so your ship must be ready. I'll go with you. It's an event to see two Columbuses starting for another world."
* * * * *
The gray dawn-light over the flying field was flushing to faint rose as the three strode out to where the long X-type stood, its strangely curved wings, enclosed cabin and flat, fan-like tail gleaming dully. Its motor was already roaring with power and the plane's stubby wheels strained against the chocks. In their great suits Norman and Hackett were like two immense ape-figures in the uncertain light, to the eyes of those about them.
"Well, all the luck," Harding told them. "You know I'm pulling for you, but--I suppose it's useless to say anything about being careful."
"I seem to have heard the words," Hackett grinned, as he and Norman shook the field superintendent's hand.
"It's all the craziest chance," Norman told the other. "And if we don't come down in a reasonable time--well, you'll know that our theory was right, and you can broadcast it or not as you please."
"I hope for your sake that you're dead wrong," smiled the official. "I've told you two to get off the Earth a lot of times, but I never meant it seriously."
Harding stepped back as the two clambered laboriously into the cramped cabin. Norman took the controls, the door slammed, and as the chocks were jerked back and the motor roared louder the long plane curved up at a dizzy angle from the field into the dawn. Hackett waved a thick arm down toward the diminishing figures on the field below; then turned from the window to peer ahead with his companion.
The plane flew in a narrow ascending spiral upward, at an angle that would have been impossible to any ship save an X-type. Norman's eyes roved steadily over the instrument as they rose, his ears unconsciously alert for each explosion of the motor. Earth receded swiftly into a great gray concave surface as they climbed higher and higher.
By the time the five-mile height was reached Earth's surface had changed definitely from concave to convex. The plane was ascending by then in a somewhat wider spiral, but its climb was as steady and sure as ever. Frost begin to form quickly on the cabin's windows, creeping out from the edges. Norman spoke a word over the motor's muffled thunder, and Hackett snicked on the electrical radiators. The frost crept back as their warm, clean heat flooded the cabin.
Ten miles--fifteen--they had reached already altitudes impossible but a few years before, though it was nothing to the X-types. As they passed the ten-mile mark, Hackett set the compact oxygen-generator going. A clean, tangy odor filled the cabin as it began functioning. Twenty miles--twenty-two--
* * * * *
After a time Norman pointed mutely to the clock on the instrument board, and Hackett nodded. They were well within their time schedule, having calculated to reach the forty-mile height at ten, the hour when, by its computed orbit, the second satellite should be passing overhead. "--26--27--28--" Hackett muttered the altimeter figures to himself as the needle crept over them.
Glancing obliquely down through the window he saw that Earth was now a huge gray ball beneath them, white cloud-oceans obscuring the drab details of its surface here and there. "--31--32--" The plane was climbing more slowly, and at a lesser angle. Even the X-type had to struggle to rise in the attenuated air now about them. Only the super-light, super-powered plane could ever have reached the terrific height.
It was at the thirty-four mile level that the real battle for altitude began. Norman kept the plane curving steadily upward, handling it with surpassing skill in the rarefied air. Frost was on its windows now despite the heating mechanism. Slowly the altimeter needle crept to the forty mark. Norman kept the ship circling, its wings tilted slightly, but not climbing, Earth a great gray misty ball beneath.
"Can't keep this height long," he jerked. "If our second satellite doesn't show up in minutes we've had a trip for nothing."
"All seems mighty different up here," was Hackett's shouted comment. "Easy enough to talk down there about hopping onto the thing, but up here--hell, there's nothing but air and mighty little of that!"
Norman grinned. "There'll be more. If I'm right about this thing we won't need to hop it--its own atmosphere will pick us up."
Both looked anxious as the motor sputtered briefly. But in a moment it was again roaring steadily. Norman shook his head.
"Maybe a fool's errand after all. No--I'm still sure we're right! But it seems that we don't prove it this time."
"Going down?" asked Hackett.
"We'll have to, in minutes. Even with its own air-feed the motor can't stand this height for--"
* * * * *
Norman never finished the words. There was a sound, a keen rising, rushing sound of immense power that reached their ears over the motor's roar. Then in an instant the universe seemed to go mad about them: they saw the gray ball of Earth and the sun above skyrocketing around them as the plane whirled madly.
The rushing sound was in that moment thunderous, terrible, and as winds smashed and rocked the plane like giant hands, Hackett glimpsed another sphere that was not the sphere of Earth, a greenish globe that expanded with lightning speed in the firmament beside their spinning plane! The winds stilled; the green globe changed abruptly to a landscape of green land and sea toward which the plane was falling! Norman was fighting the controls--land and sea were gyrating up to them with dizzy speed--crash!
With that cracking crash the plane was motionless. Sunlight poured through its windows, and great green growths were all around it. Hackett, despite Norman's warning cry, forced the door open and was bursting outside, Norman after him. They staggered and fell, with curious lightness and slowness, on the ground outside, then clutched the plane for support and gazed stupefiedly around them.
The plane had crashed down into a thicket of giant green reeds that rose a yard over their heads, its pancake landing having apparently not damaged it. The ground beneath their feet was soft and soggy, the air warm and balmy, and the giant reeds hid all the surrounding landscape from view.
In the sky the sun burned near one horizon with unusual brilliance. But it was dwarfed, in size, by the huge gray circle that filled half the heavens overhead. A giant gray sphere it was, screened here and there by floating white mists and clouds, that had yet plain on it the outlines of dark continents and gleaming seas. A quaking realization held the two as they stared up at it.
* * * * *
"Earth!" Norman was babbling. "It's Earth, Hackett--above us; my God, I can't believe even yet that we've done it!"
"Then we're on--the satellite--the second satellite!--" Hackett fought for reality. "Those winds that caught us--"
"They were the atmosphere of this world, of the second satellite! They caught us and carried us on inside this smaller world's atmosphere, Hackett. We're moving with it around Earth at terrific speed now!"
"The second satellite, and we on it!" Hackett whispered, incredulously. "But these reeds--it can't all be like this--"
They stepped together away from the plane. The effort sent each of them sailing upward in a great, slow leap, to float down more than a score of feet from the plane. But unheeding in their eagerness this strange effect of the satellite's lesser gravitational power, they moved on, each step a giant, clumsy leap. Four such steps took them out of the towering reeds onto clear ground.
It was a gentle, grassy slope they were on, stretching away along a gray-green sea that extended out to the astoundingly near horizon on their right. To the left it rose into low hills covered with dense masses of green junglelike vegetation. Hackett and Norman, though, gazed neither at sea or hills for the moment, but at the half-score grotesque figures who had turned toward them as they emerged from the reeds. A sick sense of the unreal held them as they gazed, frozen with horror. For the great figures returning their gaze a few yards from them were--frog-men!
* * * * *
Frog-men! Great mottled green shapes seven to eight feet in height, with bowed, powerful legs and arms that ended in webbed paws. The heads were bulbous ones in which wide, unwinking frog-eyes were set at the sides, the mouths white-lipped and white-lined. Three of the creatures held each a black metal tube-and-handle oddly like a target-pistol.
"Norman!" Hackett's voice was a crescendo of horror. "Norman!"
"Back to the plane!" Norman cried thickly. "The plane--"
The two staggered back, but the frog-men, recovering from their own first surprise, were running forward with great hopping steps! The two fliers flung themselves back in a floating leap toward the reeds, but the green monsters were quick after them. A croaking cry came from one and as another raised his tube-and-handle, something flicked from it that burst close beside Norman. There was no sound or light as it burst, but the reeds for a few feet around it vanished!
* * * * *
A hoarse cry from Hackett--the creatures had reached him, grasped him at the edge of the reeds! Norman swerved in his floating leap to strike the struggling flier and frog-men. The scene whirled around him as he fought them, great paws reaching for him. With a sick, frantic rage he felt his clenched fist drive against cold, green, billowy bodies. Croaking cries sounded in his ears; then, Hackett and he were jerked to their feet, held tightly by four of the creatures.
"My God, Norman," panted Hackett, helpless. "What are they--frog-things?--"
"Steady, Hackett. They're the people of the second satellite, it seems; wait!"
One of the armed frog-men approached and inspected them, and then croaked an order in a deep voice. Then, still holding the two tightly, the party of monsters began to move along the slope, skirting the sea's edge. In a few minutes they reached two curious objects resting on the slope. They seemed long black metal boats, slender and with sharp prow and stern. A compact mechanism and control-board filled the prow, while at the stern and sides were long tubes mounted on swivels like machine-guns.
The frog-men motioned Norman and Hackett into one, fastening the two prisoners and themselves into their seats with metal straps provided for the purpose. Four had entered the one boat, the others that of the captives. One at the prow moved his paws over the control-board and with a purring of power the boat, followed by the other, rose smoothly into the air. It headed out over the gray-green sea, land dropping quickly from sight behind, the horizons water-bounded on all sides. From their nearness Norman guessed that this second satellite of Earth's was small indeed beside its mother planet. He had to look up to earth's great gray sphere overhead to attain a sense of reality.
Hackett was whispering beside him, the frog-men watchful. "Norman, it's not real--it can't be real! These things--these boats--intelligent like men--"
The other sought to steady him. "It's a different world, Hackett. Gravitation different, light different, everything different, and evolution here has had a different course. On Earth men evolved to be the most intelligent life-forms, but here the frog-races, it seems."
"But where are they taking us? Could we ever find the plane again?"
"God knows. If we ever get away from these things we might. And we've got to find Fellows, too; I wonder where he is on this world."
* * * * *
For many minutes the two boats raced on at great speed over the endless waters before the watery skyline was broken far ahead by something dark and unmoving. Hackett and Norman peered with intense interest toward it. It seemed at first a giant squat mountain rising from the sea, but as they shot nearer they saw that its outline was too regular, and that colossal as it was in size it was the work of intelligence. They gasped as they came nearer and got a better view of it.
For it was a gigantic dome of black metal rising sheer from the lonely sea, ten miles if anything in diameter, a third that in greatest height. There was no gate or window or opening of any kind in it. Just the colossal, smooth black dome rearing from the watery plain. Yet the two boats were flashing lower toward it.
"They can't be going inside!" Hackett conjectured. "There's no way in and what could be in there? The whole thing's mad--"
"There's some way," Norman said. "They're slowing--"
The flying-boats were indeed slowing as they dipped lower. They were very near the dome now, its curving wall a looming, sky-high barrier before them. Suddenly the boats dipped sharply downward toward the green sea. Before the two fliers could comprehend their purpose, could do aught more than draw instinctive great breaths in preparation, the two craft had shot down into the waters and were arrowing down through the green depths.
Blinded, flung against his metal strap by the resistance of the waters they ripped through, Norman yet retained enough of consciousness to glimpse beams of light that stabbed ahead from the prows of their rushing boats, to see vaguely strange creatures of the deep blundering in and out of those beams as the boats hurtled forward. The water that forced its way between his lips was fresh, he was vaguely aware, and even as he fought to hold his breath was aware too that the frog-men seemed in no way incommoded by the sudden transition into the water, their amphibian nature allowing them to stay under it far longer than any human could do.
The boats ripped through the waters at terrific speed and in a few seconds there loomed before them the giant metal wall of the great dome, going down into the depths here. Norman glimpsed vaguely that the whole colossal dome rested on a vast pedestal-like mountain of rock that rose from the sea's floor almost to the surface. Then a great round opening in the wall; the boats flashed into it and were hurtling along a water-filled tunnel. Norman felt his lungs near bursting--when the tunnel turned sharply upward and the boats whizzed up and abruptly out of the water-tunnel into air!
* * * * *
But it was not the open air again. They were beneath the gigantic dome! For as Norman and Hackett breathed deep, awe fell on their faces as they took in the scene. Far overhead stretched the dome's colossally curving roof, and far out on all sides. It was lit beneath that roof by a clear light that the two would have sworn was sunlight. The dome was in effect the roof of a gigantic, illuminated building, and upon its floor there stretched a mighty city.
The city of the frog-men! Their boats were rising up over it and Norman and Hackett saw it clear. Square mile upon square mile of structures stretched beneath the dome, black buildings often of immense size, varying in shape, but all of square, rectangular proportions. Between them moved countless frog-hordes, swirling throngs in streets and squares, and over the roofs darted thick swarms of flying-boats. And at the city's center, in a great, circular, clear space, lay a wide, round, green pool--the opening of the water-tunnel up through which they had come.
Norman pointed down toward it. "That's your answer!" he cried. "The only entrance to this frog-city is from the sea, up through that water-tunnel!"
"Good God, an amphibian city!" Hackett was shaken, white-faced.
The two boats were driving quickly over the city, through the swarming craft. Norman glimpsed towering buildings that might have been palaces, temples, laboratories. They slowed and dipped toward one block-like building not far from the water-tunnel's opening. Armed frog-guards were on its roof, and other boats rested there. The two came to rest and the two captives were jerked out, the guards seizing them.
Half-dragged and half-floating they were led toward an opening in the roof from which a stair led downward. They passed down thus into the building's interior, lit by many windows. Norman glimpsed long halls ending in barred doors, guards here and there. Tube-lines ran along the walls and somewhere machines were throbbing dully. They came at last to a barred door whose guard opened it at the croaking order of the frog-men who held the two, and they were thrust inside, as the door clanged. They turned, and exclaimed in amazement. The room held fully a half-hundred men!
They were men such as the two fliers had never seen before, like humans except that their skins were a light green instead of the normal white and pink. They were dressed in dark short tunics, and kept talking to each other in a tongue quite unintelligible to Norman and Hackett. They came closer, flocking curiously around the two men, with a babel of voices quite meaningless to the two. Then one of the men uttered an exclamation, and all turned.
* * * * *
The barred door had swung open and a half-dozen frog-guards entered, followed by two frog-men carrying a square little mechanism from which tubing led back out through the door.
"Norman--these men--" Hackett was whispering rapidly. "If there are men in this world too, it may be that--"
"Quiet, Hackett--look at what they're doing."
The two frog-men had set their mechanism in place and then croaked out a brief word or order. Slowly, reluctantly, one of the green men moved toward them. Quickly they removed a metal disk fastened to his arm, exposing a small orifice like an unhealed wound. Onto this they fastened a suckerlike object from which a transparent tube led back through the mechanism. The machine hummed and at once a red stream pulsed through the tube and back through the mechanism. The man to whom it was attached was growing rapidly pale!
Norman, sick with horror, clutched his companion. "Hackett--these frog-men are sucking his blood from him!"
"Good God! And look--they're doing it with another!"
"All of these men--kept prisoners to furnish them with blood. It must be the damned creatures' food! And we here with the others--"
A common horror shook the two. It did not seem to affect the green men in the room, though, who advanced to the mechanism one by one with a reluctant air as of cows unwilling to be milked. Each was attached to the mechanism by the sucking disk on his arm, and out of each the blood poured through the tube. The metal disk was replaced on his arm then and he went back to the others. Norman saw that the frog-men took only from each an amount of blood that they could lose and yet live, since, though each came back pale and weak from the mechanism, they were able to walk.
"It must be their food--human blood!" Norman repeated. "They may have thousands on thousands of humans penned up like this, like so many herds of cows, and perhaps they live entirely on the life-blood they milk from them. Human cows--God!"
"Norman--look--they're calling to us!"
* * * * *
The two stiffened. All the others in the room had taken their turn at the blood-sucking mechanism and now the frog-men croaked their order to the two fliers. They had forgotten their own predicament in the horror of the scene, but now it became real to them. They backed against the room's wall, quivering, dangerous.
The frog-guards came forward to drag them to the machine. A webbed paw was outstretched but Hackett with a wild blow drove the frog-man back and downward. The frog-guards leaped, and Norman and Hackett struck them back with all the greater strength the lesser gravitation gave them. The room was in an uproar, the green men shouting hoarsely and seeming on the point of rushing to their aid.
But the menacing force-pistols of the other frog-guards held back the shouting men and in moments the two fliers were overpowered by sheer weight of frog-bodies. Norman felt himself dragged to the machine.
Pain needled his upper arm as an incision was made. He felt the sucking-disk attached; then the machine hummed, and a sickening nausea swept him as the blood drained from his body. Held tightly by the guards he went dizzy, weak, but at last felt the sucker removed and a metal disk fastened over the incision. He was jerked aside and Hackett, his face deathly white, was dragged into his place. In a moment some of the latter's blood had been pumped from him also.
The machine was withdrawn, Norman and Hackett were released, and the frog-men, with their black force-pistols watchfully raised, withdrew, the door clanging. The room settled back to quietness, the green men stretching in lassitude on the metal bunks around it. The two fliers crouched down near the door, shuddering nausea and weakness still holding them.
Norman found that Hackett was laughing weakly. "To think that twenty-four hours ago I was in New York," he half-laughed, half-sobbed. "On Earth--Earth--"
The other gripped his arm. "It's horrible, Hackett, I know. But it isn't instant death, and we've still a chance to escape. Hell, can damn frog-men keep us here? Where's your nerve, man?"
A voice beside them made them turn in amazement. "You are men from Earth?" it asked, in queerly accented English. "From Earth?"
* * * * *
Astonishment held them as they saw who spoke. It was one of the green men in the room, who had settled down by their side. A tall figure with superb muscles and frank, clean countenance, his dark eyes afire with eagerness.
"English?" Norman exclaimed. "You know English--you understand me?"
The other showed his teeth in a smile. "I know, yes. I'm Sarja, and I learned to speak it from Fallas, in my city, before the Ralas caught me."
"Fallas--" Norman repeated, puzzled; then suddenly he flamed. "By God, he means Fellows!"
"Fallas, yes," said the other. "From the sky he fell into our city in a strange flying-boat that was smashed. He was hurt but we cared for him, and he taught me his speech, which I heard you talking now."
"Then Fellows is in your city now?" asked Hackett eagerly. "Where is that?"
"Across this sea--back in the hills," the other waved. "It is far from the sea but I was rash one day and came too near the water in my flying-boat. The Ralas were out raiding and they saw me, caught me, and brought me here. No escape now, until I die."
"The Ralas--you mean these frog-men?" Norman asked.
Sarja nodded. "Of course. They are the tyrants and oppressors of this world. Our little world is but a tenth or less the size of your great Earth which it circles, but it has its lands and rivers, and this one great fresh-water sea into which the latter empty. In this sea long ago developed the Ralas, the great frog-men who acquired such intelligence and arts that they became lords of this world.
"Through the centuries, while on the land our races of green men have been struggling upward, the Ralas have oppressed them. Long ago the Ralas left all their other cities to build this one great amphibian city at the sea's center. Entrance to it is only by the water-tunnel from without, and being frog-people entrance thus is easy for them since they can move for many minutes under water, though they drown like any other breathing animal if kept under too long. Humans dare not try to enter it thus by the water-tunnel, since, before they could find it and make their way up through it, they would have drowned.
* * * * *
"So the Ralas have ruled from this impregnable amphibian city. Its colossal metal dome is invulnerable to ordinary attack, and though solid and without openings it is always as light beneath the dome here as outside, since the Ralas' scientists contrived light-condensers and conductors that catch light outside and bring it in to release inside. So when it is day outside the sunlight is as bright here, and when night comes the Earth-light shines here the same as without.
"From this city their raiding parties have gone out endlessly to swoop down on the cities of us green men. Since we learned to make flying-boats like theirs, with molecular-motors, and to make the guns like theirs that fire shells filled with annihilating force, we have resisted them stoutly but their raids have not ceased. And always they have brought their prisoners back in to this, their city.
"Tens of thousands of green men they have prisoned here like us, for the sole purpose of supplying them with blood. For the Ralas live on this blood alone, changing it chemically to fit their own bodies and then taking it into their bodies. It eliminates all necessity for food here for them. Every few days they drain blood from us, and since we are well fed and cared for to keep us good blood-producers, we will be here for a long time before we die."
"But haven't you made any attempt to get out of here--to escape?" Norman asked.
Sarja smiled. "Who could escape the city of the Ralas? In all recorded history it has never been done, for even if by some miracle you got a flying-boat, the opening of the water-tunnel that leads outward is guarded always."
"Guards or no guards, we're going to try it and not sit here to furnish blood for the Ralas," Norman declared. "Are you willing to help, to try to get to Fellows and your city?"
The green man considered. "It is hopeless," he said, "but as well to die beneath the force-shells of the Ralas as live out a lifetime here. Yes, I will help, though I cannot see how you expect to escape even from this room."
"I think we can manage that," Norman told him. "But first--not a word to these others. We can't hope to escape with them all, and there is no knowing what one might not betray us to the frog-men."
He went on then to outline to the other two the idea that had come to him. Both exclaimed at the simpleness of the idea, though Sarja remained somewhat doubtful. While Hackett slept, weak still from his loss of blood, Norman had the green man scratch on the metal floor as well as possible a crude map of the satellite's surface, and found that the city, where Fellows was, seemed some hundreds of miles back from the sea.
* * * * *
While they talked, the sunlight, apparently sourceless, that came through the heavily barred windows of the room faded rapidly, and dusk settled over the great amphibian city beneath the giant dome, kept from total darkness by a silvery pervading light that Norman reflected must be the light from Earth's great sphere. With the dusk's coming the activities in the frog-city lessened greatly.
With dusk, too, frog-guards entered the room bearing long metal troughs filled with a red jellylike substance, that they placed on racks along the wall. As the guards withdrew the men in the room rushed toward the troughs, elbowing each other aside and striking each other to scoop up and eat as much of the red jelly as possible. It was for all the world like the feeding of farm-animals, and Hackett and Norman so sickened at the sight that they had no heart to try the food. Sarja, though, had no such scruples and seemed to make a hearty meal at one of the troughs.
After the meal the green men sought the bunks and soon were stretched in sonorous slumber. It was, Norman reflected, exactly the existence of domesticated animals--to eat and sleep and give food to their masters. A deeper horror of the frog-men shook him, and a deeper determination to escape them. He waited until all in the room were sleeping before beckoning to Sarja and Hackett.
"Quiet now," he whispered to them. "If these others wake they'll make such a clamor we won't have a chance in the world. Ready, Sarja?"
The green man nodded. "Yes, though I still think such a thing's impossible."
"Probably is," Norman admitted. "But it's the one chance we've got, the immensely greater strength of our Earth-muscle that the frog-men must have forgotten when they put us in here."
They moved silently to the room's great barred door, outside which a frog-guard paced. They waited until he had passed the door and on down the hall, then Norman and Hackett and Sarja grasped together one of the door's vertical bars. It was an inch and a half in thickness, of solid metal, and it seemed ridiculous that any men could bend it by the sheer strength of their muscles.
Norman, though, was relying on the fact that on the second satellite, with its far lesser gravitational influence, their Earth-muscles gave them enormous strength. He grasped the bar, Hackett and Sarja gripping it below him, and then at a whispered word they pulled with all their force. The bar resisted and again, with sweat starting on their foreheads, they pulled. It gave a little.
* * * * *
They shrank back from it as the guard returned, moving past. Then grasping the bar again they bent all their force once more upon it. Each effort saw it bending more, the opening in the door's bars widening. They gave a final great wrench and the bent bar squealed a little. They shrank back, appalled, but the guard had not heard or noticed. He moved past it on his return along the hall, and no sooner was past it than Norman squeezed through the opening and leaped silently for the great frog-man's back.
It went down with a wild flurry of waving webbed paws and croaking cries, stilled almost instantly by Norman's terrific blows. There was silence then as Hackett and Sarja squeezed out after him, the momentary clamor of the battle having aroused no one.
The three leaped together toward the stairs. In two great floating leaps they were on the floor above, Hackett and Norman dragging Sarja between them. They were not seen, were sailing in giant steps up another stair, hopes rising high. The last stair--the roof-opening above; and then from beneath a great croaking cry swelled instantly into chorus of a alarmed shouts.
"They've found the door--the guard!" panted Hackett.
They were bursting out onto the roof. Frog-guards were on it who came in a hopping rush toward them, force-pistols raised. But a giant leap took Hackett among them, to amaze them for a moment with great flailing blows. Sarja had leaped for the nearest flying-boat resting on the roof, and was calling in a frantic voice to Norman and Hackett. Norman was turning toward Hackett, the center of a wild combat, but the latter emerged from it for a brief second to motion him frantically back.
"No use, Norman--get away--get away!" he cried hoarsely, frenziedly.
"Hackett--for God's sake--!" Norman half-leaped to the other, but an arm caught him, pulled him desperately onto the boat's surface. It was Sarja, the long craft flying over the roof beneath his control.
"They come!" he panted. "Too late now--" Frog-men were pouring up onto the roof from below. Sarja sent the craft rocketing upward, as Hackett gestured them away for a last frantic time before going down beneath the frog-men's onslaught.
* * * * *
The roof and the combat on it dropped back and beneath them like a stone as their craft ripped across the silvery dusk over the mighty frog-city. They were shooting toward the city's center, toward the green pool that was the entrance to the water-tunnel, while behind and beneath an increasing clamor of alarm spread swiftly. Norman raged futilely.
"Hackett--Hackett! We can't leave him--"
"Too late!" Sarja cried. "We cannot help him but only be captured again. We escape now and come back--come back--"
The truth of it pierced Norman's brain even in the wild moment. Hackett had fought and held back the frog-guards only that they might escape. He shouted suddenly.
"Sarja--the water-tunnel!" A half-dozen boats with frog-guards on them were rising round it in answer to the alarm!
"The force-gun!" cried the green man. "Beside you--!"
Norman whirled, glimpsed the long tube on its swivel beside him, trained it on the boats rising ahead as they rocketed nearer. He fumbled frantically at a catch at the gun's rear, then felt a stream of shells flicking out of it. Two of the boats ahead vanished as the shells released their annihilating force, another sagged and fell. From the remaining three invisible force-shells flicked around them, but in an instant Sarja had whirled the boat through them and down into the water-tunnel!
Norman clung desperately to his seat as the boat flashed down through the waters, and then, as Sarja sent it flying out through the great tunnel's waters, glimpsed, close behind, the beams of the three Rala boats as they pursued them through the tunnel, overtaking them. Could the force-shells be fired under water? Norman did not know, but desperately he swung the force-gun back as they rushed through the waters, and pressed the catch. An instant later beams and boats behind them in the tunnel vanished.
His lungs were afire; it seemed that he must open them to the strangling water. The boat was ripping the waters at such tremendous speed that he felt himself being torn from his hold on it. Pain seemed poured like molten metal through his chest--he could hold out no longer; and then the boat stabbed up from the waters into clear air!
* * * * *
Norman panted, sobbed. Behind them rose the colossal metal dome of the frog-city, gleaming dully in the silvery light that flooded the far-stretching seas. That light poured down from a stupendous silver crescent in the night skies. Norman saw dully the dark outlines on it before he remembered. Earth! He laughed a little hysterically. Sarja was driving the flying-boat out over the sea and away from the frog-city at enormous speed. At last he glanced back. Far behind them lay the great dome and up around it gleaming lights were pouring, lights of pursuing Rala boats.
"We escape," Sarja cried, "the city of the Ralas, from which none ever before escaped!"
Remembrance smote Norman. "Hackett! Held off those frog-men so we could get away--we'll come back for him, by God!"
"We come back!" said Sarja. "We come back with all the green men of this world to the Ralas' city, yes! I know what Fallas has planned."
"Can you find your way to him--to your city?" Norman asked.
Sarja nodded, looking upward. "Before the next sun has come and gone we can reach it."
The boat flew onward, and the great dome and the searching lights around it dropped beneath the horizon. Norman felt the warm wind drying his drenched garments as they rushed onward. Crouched on the boat he gazed up toward the silver crescent of Earth sinking toward the horizon ahead. That meant, he told himself, that the satellite turned slowly on its axis as it whirled around Earth. It came to him that its night and day periods must be highly irregular.
When the sun climbed from the waters behind them they were flying still over a boundless waste of waters, but soon they sighted on the horizon ahead the thin green line of land. Sarja slowed as they reached it, took his bearings, and sent the craft flying onward.
They passed over a green coastal plain and then over low hills joined in long chains and mantled by dense and mighty jungles, towering green growths of unfamiliar appearance to Norman. He thought he glimpsed, more than once, huge beastlike forms moving in them. He did see twice in the jungles great clearings where were fair-sized cities of bright-green buildings, a metal tower rising from each. But when he pointed to them Sarja shook his head.
* * * * *
At last, as they passed over another range of hills and came into sight of a third green city with its looming tower, the other pointed, his face alight.
"My city," he said. "Fallas there."
Fellows! Norman's heart beat faster.
They shot closer and lower and he saw that the buildings were obviously green to lend them a certain protective coloration similar to that of the green jungles around them. The tower with its surmounting cage puzzled him though, but before he could ask Sarja concerning it his answer came in a different way. A long metal tube poked slowly out of the cage on the tower's top and sent a hail of force-shells flicking around them.
"They're firing on us!" Norman cried. "This can't be your city!"
"They see our black boat!" Sarja exclaimed. "They think we're Rala raiders and unless we let them know they'll shoot us out of the air! Stand up--wave to them--!"
Both Norman and Sarja sprang to their feet and waved wildly to those in the tower-cage, their flying-boat drifting slowly forward. Instantly the force-shells ceased to hail toward them, and as they moved nearer a sirenlike signal broke from the cage. At once scores of flying-boats like their own, but glittering metal instead of black, shot up from the city where they had lain until now, and surrounded them.
As Sarja called in his own tongue to them the green men on the surrounding boats broke into resounding cries. They shot down toward the city, Norman gazing tensely. Great crowds of green men in their dark tunics had swarmed out into its streets with the passing of the alarm, and their craft and the others came to rest in an open square that was the juncture of several streets.
The green men that crowded excitedly about Norman and Sarja gave way to a half-dozen hurrying into the square from the greatest of the buildings facing on it. All but one were green men like the others. But that one--the laughing-eyed tanned face--the worn brown clothing, the curious huge steps with which he came--Norman's heart leapt.
"Fellows!"
"Great God--Norman!" The other's face was thunderstruck. "Norman--how by all that's holy did you get here?"
* * * * *
Norman, mind and body strained to the breaking point, was incoherent. "We guessed how you'd gone--the second satellite, Fellows--Hackett and I came after you--taken to that frog-city--"
As Norman choked the tale, Fellows' face was a study. And when it was finished he swallowed, and gripped Norman's hand viselike.
"And you and Hackett figured it out and came after me--took that risk? Crazy, both of you. Crazy--"
"Fellows, Hackett's still there, if he's alive! In the Rala city!"
Fellows' voice was grim, quick. "We'll have him out. Norman, if he still lives. And living or dead, the Ralas will pay soon for this and for all they've done upon this world in ages. Their time nears--yes."
He led Norman, excited throngs of the green men about them, into the great building from which he had emerged. There were big rooms inside, workshops and laboratories that Norman but vaguely glimpsed in passing. The room to which the other led him was one with a long metal couch. Norman stretched protestingly upon it at the other's bidding, drifted off almost at once into sleep.
He woke to find the sunlight that had filled the room gone and replaced by the silvery Earth-light. From the window he saw that the silver-lit city outside now held tremendous activity, immense hordes of green men surging through it with masses of weapons and equipment, flying-boats pouring down out of the night from all directions. He turned as the door of the room clicked open behind him. It was his old friend Fellows.
"I thought you'd be awake by now, Norman. Feeling fit?"
"As though I'd slept a week," Norman said, and the other laughed his old care-free laugh.
"You almost have, at that. Two days and nights you've slept, but it all adds up to hardly more than a dozen hours."
"This world!" Norman's voice held all his incredulity. "To think that we should be on it--a second satellite of Earth's--it seems almost beyond belief."
* * * * *
"Sometimes it seems so to me, too," Fellows said thoughtfully. "But it's not a bad world--not the human part of it, at least. When this satellite's atmosphere caught me and pitchforked me down among these green men, smashing the plane and almost myself, they took care of me. You say three others vanished as I did? I never heard of them here; they must have crashed into the sea or jungles. Of course, I'd have got back to Earth on one of these flying-boats if I'd been able, but their molecular power won't take them far from this world's surface, so I couldn't.
"As it was, the green men cared for me, and when I found how those frog-men have dominated this world for ages, how that city of the Ralas has spread endless terror among the humans here, I resolved to smash those monsters whatever I did. I taught some of the green men like Sarja my own speech, later learning theirs, and in the weeks I've been here I've been working out a way to smash the Ralas.
"You know that amphibian city is almost impregnable because humans can hardly live long enough under the water to get into it, let alone fight under water as the frog-men can. To meet them on even terms the green men needed diving-helmets with an oxygen supply. They'd never heard of such an idea, too afraid of the sea ever to experiment in it, but I convinced them and they've made enough helmets for all their forces. In them they can meet the Ralas under water on equal terms.
"And there's a chance we can destroy that whole Rala city with their help. It's built on a giant pedestal of rock rising from the sea's floor, as you saw, and I've had some of the green men make huge force-shells or force-bombs that ought to be powerful enough to split that pedestal beneath the city. If we can get a chance to place those bombs it may smash the frog-men forever on this world. But one thing is sure: we're going to get Hackett out if he still lives!"
"Then you're, going to attack the Rala city now?" Norman cried.
Fellows nodded grimly. "While you have slept all the forces of the green men on this world have been gathering. Your coming has only precipitated our plans, Norman--the whole soul of the green races has been set upon this attack for weeks!"
* * * * *
Norman, half bewildered at the swiftness with which events rushed upon him, found himself striding with Fellows in great steps out through the building into the great square. It was shadowed now by mass on mass of flying-boats, crowded with green men, that hung over it and over the streets. One boat, Sarja at its controls, waited on the ground and as they entered and buckled themselves into the seats the craft drove up to hang with the others.
A shattering cheer greeted them. Norman saw that in the silvery light of Earth's great crescent there stretched over the city and surrounding jungle now a veritable plain of flying-boats. On each were green men and each bristled with force-guns, and had as many great goggled helmets fastened to it as it had occupants. He glimpsed larger boats loaded with huge metal cylinders--the force-bombs Fellows had mentioned.
Fellows rose and spoke briefly in a clear voice to the assembled green men on their craft, and another great shout roared from them, and from these who watched in the city below. Then as he spoke a word, Sarja sent their craft flying out over the city, and the great mass of boats, fully a thousand in number, were hurtling in a compact column after them.
Fellows leaned to Norman as the great column of purring craft shot on over the silver-lit jungles. "We'll make straight for the Rala city and try setting into it before they understand what's happening."
"Won't they have guards out?"
"Probably, but we can beat them back into the city before their whole forces can come out on us. That's the only way in which we can get inside and reach Hackett. And while we're attacking the force-bombs can be placed, though I don't rely too much on them."
"If the attack only succeeds in getting us inside," Norman said, grim-lipped, "we'll have a chance--"
"It's on the knees of the gods. These green men are doing an unprecedented thing in attacking the Ralas, the masters of this world, remember. But they've got ages of oppression to avenge; they'll fight."
The fleet flew on, hills and rivers a silver-lit panorama unreeling beneath them. Earth's crescent sank behind them, and by the time they flashed out over the great fresh-water sea, the sun was rising like a flaming eye from behind it. Land sank from sight behind and the green men were silent, tense, as they saw stretching beneath only the gray waters that for ages had been the base of the dread frog-men. But still the fleet's column raced on.
* * * * *
At last the column slowed. Far ahead the merest bulge broke the level line where sky and waters met. The amphibian city of the Ralas! At Fellows' order-the flying-boats sank downward until they moved just above the waters. Another order made the green hosts don the grotesque helmets. Norman found that while cumbersome their oxygen supply was unfailing. They shot on again at highest speed, but as the gigantic black dome of the frog-city grew in their vision there darted up from around it suddenly a far-flung swarm of black spots.
"Rala boats!"
The muffled exclamation was Fellows'. There needed now no order on his part, though. Like hawks, leaping for prey, the fleet of the green men sprang through the air. Norman, clutching the force-gun between his knees, had time only to see that the Rala craft were a few hundred in number and that, contemptuous of the greater odds that favored these humans they had so long oppressed, they were flying straight to meet them. Then the two fleets met--and were spinning side by side above the waters.
Norman saw the thing only as a wild whirl of Rala boats toward and beside them, great green frog-men crowding the craft, their force-guns hailing shells. Automatically, with the old air-fighting instinct, his fingers had pressed the catch of the gun between his knees and as its shells flicked toward the rushing boats he saw areas of nothingness opening suddenly in their mass, shells striking and exploding in annihilating invisibility there and in their own fleet.
The two fleets mingled and merged momentarily, the battle becoming a thing of madness, a huge whirl of black and glittering flying-boats together, striking shells exploding nothingness about them. The Ralas were fighting like demons.
The merged, terrific combat lasted but moments; could last but moments. Norman, his gun's magazine empty, seemed to see the mass of struggling ships splittering, diverging; then saw that the black craft were dropping, plummeting downward toward the waves! The Ralas, stunned by that minute of terrific combat, were fleeing. Muffled cries and cheers came from about him as the glittering flying-boats of the green men shot after them. They crashed down into the waters and curved deeply into their green-depths, toward the gigantic dome.
* * * * *
Ahead the Rala boats were in flight toward their city, and now their pursuers were like sharks striking after them. There in the depths the force-guns of black and glittering boats alike were spitting, and giant waves and underwater convulsions rocked pursued and pursuers as the exploding shells annihilated boats and water about them. The tunnel! Its round opening yawned in the looming wall ahead, and Norman saw the Rala craft, reduced to scores in number, hurtling into it, to rouse all the forces of the great amphibian city. Their own boats were flashing into the opening after them. He glimpsed as he glanced back for a moment the larger craft with the great force-bombs veering aside behind them.
It was nightmare in the water-tunnel. Flashing beams of the craft ahead and waters that rocked and smashed around them as in flight the Ralas still rained back force-shells toward them in a chaos of action. Once the frog-men turned to hold them back in the tunnel, but by sheer weight the rushing ships of the green men crashed them onward. Boats were going into nothingness all around them. A part of Norman's brain wondered calmly why they survived even while another part kept his gun again working, with refilled magazine. Fellows and Sarja were grotesque shapes beside him. Abruptly the tunnel curved upward and as they flashed up after the remaining Rala craft their boats ripped up into clear air! They were beneath the giant dome!
The frog-men chased inward spread out in all directions over their mighty, swarming city and across it a terrific clamor of alarm ran instantly as the green men emerged after them! Norman saw flying-boats beginning to rise across all the city and realized that moments would see all the immense force of the Ralas, the thousands of craft they could muster, pouring upon them. He pointed out over the city to a block-like building, and shouted madly through his helmet to Fellows and Sarja:
"Hackett!"
But already Sarja had sent their craft whirling across the city toward the structure, half their fleet behind it, with part still emerging from the water-tunnel. Rala boats rose before them, but nothing could stop them now, their force-shells raining ahead to clear a path for their meteor-flight. They shot down toward the block-structure, and Norman, half-crazed by now, saw that to descend and enter was suicide in the face of the frog-forces rising now over all the city. He cried to Fellows, and with two of the guns as they swooped lower they sprayed force-shells along the building's side.
* * * * *
The shells struck and whiffed away the whole side, exposing the level on the building's interior. Out from it rushed swarms of crazed green men, sweeping aside the frog-men guards, while far over the city the invading craft were loosing shells on the block-like buildings that held the prisoners, tens of thousands of them swarming forth. In the throng below as they raced madly forth Norman saw one, and shouted wildly. The one brown garbed figure looked up, saw their boat swooping lower, and leaped for it in a tremendous forty-foot spring that brought his fingers to its edge. Norman pulled him frenziedly up.
"Norman!" he babbled. "In God's name--Fellows--!"
"That helmet, Hackett!" Fellows flung at him. "My God, look at those prisoners--Norman!"
The countless thousands of green men released from the buildings whose walls had vanished under the shells of the invaders had poured forth to make the amphibian city a chaos of madness. Oblivious to all else they were throwing themselves upon the city's crowding frog-men in a battle whose ferocity was beyond belief, disregarding all else in this supreme chance to wreak vengeance on the monstrous beings who had fed upon their blood. In the incredible insanity of that raging fury the craft of the green men hanging over the city were all but forgotten.
Suddenly the city and the mighty dome over it quivered violently, and then again. There came from beneath a dull, vast, grinding roar.
"The great force-bombs!" Fellows screamed. "They've set them off--the city's sinking--out of here, for the love of God!"
The boat whirled beneath Sarja's hands toward the pool of the water-tunnel, all their fleet rushing with them. The grinding roar was louder, terrible; dome and city were shaking violently now; but in the insensate fury of their struggle the frog-men and their released prisoners were hardly aware of it. The whole great dome seemed sinking upon them and the city falling beneath it as Sarja's craft ripped down into the tunnel's waters, and then out, at awful speed, as the great tunnel's walls swayed and sank around them! They shot out into the green depths from it to hear a dull, colossal crashing through the waters from behind as the great pedestal of rock on which the city had stood, shattered by the huge force-bombs, collapsed. And as their boats flashed up into the open air they saw that the huge dome of the city of the Ralas was gone.
Beneath them was only a titanic whirlpool of foaming waters in which only the curved top of the settling dome was visible for a moment as it sank slowly and ponderously downward, with a roar as of the roar of falling worlds. Buckling, collapsing, sinking, it vanished in the foam-wild sea with all the frog-men who for ages had ruled the second satellite, and with all those prisoners who had at the last dragged them down with them to death! Ripping off their helmets, with all the green men shouting crazily about them, Norman and Fellows and Hackett stared down at the colossal maelstrom in the waters that was the tomb of the masters of a world.
Then the depression's sides collapsed, the waters rushing together ... and beneath them was but troubled, tossing sea....
* * * * *
Earth's great gray ball was overhead again and the sun was sinking again to the horizon when the three soared upward in the long, gleaming plane, its motor roaring. Norman, with Hackett and Fellows crowding the narrow cabin beside him, waved with them through its windows. For all around them were rising the flying-boats of the green men.
They were waving wildly, shouting their farewells, Sarja's tall figure erect at the prow of one. Insistent they had been that the three should stay, the three through whom the monstrous age-old tyranny of the frog-men had been lifted, but Earth-sickness was on them, and they had flown to where the plane lay still unharmed among the reeds, a hundred willing hands dragging it forth for the take-off.
The plane soared higher, motor thundering, and they saw the flying-boats sinking back from around them. They caught the wave of Sarja's hand still from the highest, and then that, too, was gone.
Upward they flew toward the great gray sphere, their eyes on the dark outlines of its continents and on one continent. Higher--higher--green land and gray tea receding beneath them; Hackett and Fellows intent and eager as Norman kept the plane rising. The satellite lay, a greenish globe, under them. And as they went higher still a rushing sound came louder to their ears.
"The edge of the satellite's atmosphere?" Fellows asked, as Norman nodded.
"We're almost to it--here we go!"
As he shot the plane higher, great forces smote it, gray Earth and green satellite and yellow sun gyrating round it as it reeled and plunged. Then suddenly it was falling steadily, gray Earth and its dark continent now beneath, while with a dwindling rushing roar its second satellite whirled away above them, passing and vanishing. Passing as though, to Norman it seemed, all their strange sojourn on it were passing; the frog-men and their mighty city, Sarja and their mad flight, the green men and the last terrific battle; all whirling away--whirling away.
HISTORIC EXPERIMENT PROVES EARTH'S ROTATION
The famous experiment which proves that the "earth do move" by letting the observer actually see it twisting underneath his feet, an experiment invented by the French mathematician Jean B. L. Foucault nearly a century ago was repeated recently under unusually impressive circumstances before an international scientific congress at Florence, Italy, the same city where Galileo once was persecuted for holding the same opinion.
From the center of the dome of the Church of Santa Maria di Fiore, Father Guido Alfani, director of the Astronomical Observatory, suspended a 200-pound weight on a wire 150 feet long. On the bottom of this weight was a tiny projecting point which traced a line on a table-top sprinkled with sand, as the great pendulum swung slowly back and forth. At a given signal Father Alfani set the pendulum to swinging. While the assembled scientists watched it, slowly the line traced across the sand table-top changed direction.
As Foucault proved long ago and as the watching scientists well knew, the table was being twisted underneath the pendulum by the rotation of the earth.
A REVOLUTIONARY AIRPLANE
A new airplane propeller has recently been patented by J. Kalmanson of Brooklyn, N. Y. Greater speed and marked saving in fuel is claimed for the invention, which may be attached to any type of airplane.
The device is in two parts, which may be used separately as front and rear propellers or combined into a single blade. The principle is that the front one acts to bring air to the other, giving the propeller more of a hold, so to speak, and greater power. This is accomplished by four air-spoons, one on each side of each blade of the propeller.
It is said that the device can double the speed of an airplane and raise it from the ground in ninety feet instead of the 200 feet most airplanes now require. It is also claimed that the new propeller will prevent the plane from making a nose drive unless the pilot forces it to do so, and enable it to make a safe landing within a short distance. Because of the increase in power and speed, the device would save a large amount of gasoline and oil, as well as guarding the motor from part of the strain on it.
The device is said to be also applicable to ships, the same principle operating in water as well as air.
TOY SHOP
By Harry Harrison
Because there were few adults in the crowd, and Colonel "Biff" Hawton stood over six feet tall, he could see every detail of the demonstration. The children—and most of the parents—gaped in wide-eyed wonder. Biff Hawton was too sophisticated to be awed. He stayed on because he wanted to find out what the trick was that made the gadget work.
"It's all explained right here in your instruction book," the demonstrator said, holding up a garishly printed booklet opened to a four-color diagram. "You all know how magnets pick up things and I bet you even know that the earth itself is one great big magnet—that's why compasses always point north. Well ... the Atomic Wonder Space Wave Tapper hangs onto those space waves. Invisibly all about us, and even going right through us, are the magnetic waves of the earth. The Atomic Wonder rides these waves just the way a ship rides the waves in the ocean. Now watch...."
Every eye was on him as he put the gaudy model rocketship on top of the table and stepped back. It was made of stamped metal and seemed as incapable of flying as a can of ham—which it very much resembled. Neither wings, propellors, nor jets broke through the painted surface. It rested on three rubber wheels and coming out through the bottom was a double strand of thin insulated wire. This white wire ran across the top of the black table and terminated in a control box in the demonstrator's hand. An indicator light, a switch and a knob appeared to be the only controls.
"I turn on the Power Switch, sending a surge of current to the Wave Receptors," he said. The switch clicked and the light blinked on and off with a steady pulse. Then the man began to slowly turn the knob. "A careful touch on the Wave Generator is necessary as we are dealing with the powers of the whole world here...."
A concerted ahhhh swept through the crowd as the Space Wave Tapper shivered a bit, then rose slowly into the air. The demonstrator stepped back and the toy rose higher and higher, bobbing gently on the invisible waves of magnetic force that supported it. Ever so slowly the power was reduced and it settled back to the table.
"Only $17.95," the young man said, putting a large price sign on the table. "For the complete set of the Atomic Wonder, the Space Tapper control box, battery and instruction book ..."
At the appearance of the price card the crowd broke up noisily and the children rushed away towards the operating model trains. The demonstrator's words were lost in their noisy passage, and after a moment he sank into a gloomy silence. He put the control box down, yawned and sat on the edge of the table. Colonel Hawton was the only one left after the crowd had moved on.
"Could you tell me how this thing works?" the colonel asked, coming forward. The demonstrator brightened up and picked up one of the toys.
"Well, if you will look here, sir...." He opened the hinged top. "You will see the Space Wave coils at each end of the ship." With a pencil he pointed out the odd shaped plastic forms about an inch in diameter that had been wound—apparently at random—with a few turns of copper wire. Except for these coils the interior of the model was empty. The coils were wired together and other wires ran out through the hole in the bottom of the control box. Biff Hawton turned a very quizzical eye on the gadget and upon the demonstrator who completely ignored this sign of disbelief.
"Inside the control box is the battery," the young man said, snapping it open and pointing to an ordinary flashlight battery. "The current goes through the Power Switch and Power Light to the Wave Generator ..."
"What you mean to say," Biff broke in, "is that the juice from this fifteen cent battery goes through this cheap rheostat to those meaningless coils in the model and absolutely nothing happens. Now tell me what really flies the thing. If I'm going to drop eighteen bucks for six-bits worth of tin, I want to know what I'm getting."
The demonstrator flushed. "I'm sorry, sir," he stammered. "I wasn't trying to hide anything. Like any magic trick this one can't be really demonstrated until it has been purchased." He leaned forward and whispered confidentially. "I'll tell you what I'll do though. This thing is way overpriced and hasn't been moving at all. The manager said I could let them go at three dollars if I could find any takers. If you want to buy it for that price...."
"Sold, my boy!" the colonel said, slamming three bills down on the table. "I'll give that much for it no matter how it works. The boys in the shop will get a kick out of it," he tapped the winged rocket on his chest. "Now really—what holds it up?"
The demonstrator looked around carefully, then pointed. "Strings!" he said. "Or rather a black thread. It runs from the top of the model, through a tiny loop in the ceiling, and back down to my hand—tied to this ring on my finger. When I back up—the model rises. It's as simple as that."
"All good illusions are simple," the colonel grunted, tracing the black thread with his eye. "As long as there is plenty of flimflam to distract the viewer."
"If you don't have a black table, a black cloth will do," the young man said. "And the arch of a doorway is a good site, just see that the room in back is dark."
"Wrap it up, my boy, I wasn't born yesterday. I'm an old hand at this kind of thing."
Biff Hawton sprang it at the next Thursday-night poker party. The gang were all missile men and they cheered and jeered as he hammed up the introduction.
"Let me copy the diagram, Biff, I could use some of those magnetic waves in the new bird!"
"Those flashlight batteries are cheaper than lox, this is the thing of the future!"
Only Teddy Kaner caught wise as the flight began. He was an amateur magician and spotted the gimmick at once. He kept silent with professional courtesy, and smiled ironically as the rest of the bunch grew silent one by one. The colonel was a good showman and he had set the scene well. He almost had them believing in the Space Wave Tapper before he was through. When the model had landed and he had switched it off he couldn't stop them from crowding around the table.
"A thread!" one of the engineers shouted, almost with relief, and they all laughed along with him.
"Too bad," the head project physicist said, "I was hoping that a little Space Wave Tapping could help us out. Let me try a flight with it."
"Teddy Kaner first," Biff announced. "He spotted it while you were all watching the flashing lights, only he didn't say anything."
Kaner slipped the ring with the black thread over his finger and started to step back.
"You have to turn the switch on first," Biff said.
"I know," Kaner smiled. "But that's part of illusion—the spiel and the misdirection. I'm going to try this cold first, so I can get it moving up and down smoothly, then go through it with the whole works."
He moved his hand back smoothly, in a professional manner that drew no attention to it. The model lifted from the table—then crashed back down.
"The thread broke," Kaner said.
"You jerked it, instead of pulling smoothly," Biff said and knotted the broken thread. "Here let me show you how to do it."
The thread broke again when Biff tried it, which got a good laugh that made his collar a little warm. Someone mentioned the poker game.
This was the only time that poker was mentioned or even remembered that night. Because very soon after this they found that the thread would lift the model only when the switch was on and two and a half volts flowing through the joke coils. With the current turned off the model was too heavy to lift. The thread broke every time.
"I still think it's a screwy idea," the young man said. "One week getting fallen arches, demonstrating those toy ships for every brat within a thousand miles. Then selling the things for three bucks when they must have cost at least a hundred dollars apiece to make."
"But you did sell the ten of them to people who would be interested?" the older man asked.
"I think so, I caught a few Air Force officers and a colonel in missiles one day. Then there was one official I remembered from the Bureau of Standards. Luckily he didn't recognize me. Then those two professors you spotted from the university."
"Then the problem is out of our hands and into theirs. All we have to do now is sit back and wait for results."
"What results?! These people weren't interested when we were hammering on their doors with the proof. We've patented the coils and can prove to anyone that there is a reduction in weight around them when they are operating...."
"But a small reduction. And we don't know what is causing it. No one can be interested in a thing like that—a fractional weight decrease in a clumsy model, certainly not enough to lift the weight of the generator. No one wrapped up in massive fuel consumption, tons of lift and such is going to have time to worry about a crackpot who thinks he has found a minor slip in Newton's laws."
"You think they will now?" the young man asked, cracking his knuckles impatiently.
"I know they will. The tensile strength of that thread is correctly adjusted to the weight of the model. The thread will break if you try to lift the model with it. Yet you can lift the model—after a small increment of its weight has been removed by the coils. This is going to bug these men. Nobody is going to ask them to solve the problem or concern themselves with it. But it will nag at them because they know this effect can't possibly exist. They'll see at once that the magnetic-wave theory is nonsense. Or perhaps true? We don't know. But they will all be thinking about it and worrying about it. Someone is going to experiment in his basement—just as a hobby of course—to find the cause of the error. And he or someone else is going to find out what makes those coils work, or maybe a way to improve them!"
"And we have the patents...."
"Correct. They will be doing the research that will take them out of the massive-lift-propulsion business and into the field of pure space flight."
"And in doing so they will be making us rich—whenever the time comes to manufacture," the young man said cynically.
"We'll all be rich, son," the older man said, patting him on the shoulder. "Believe me, you're not going to recognize this old world ten years from now."
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT
By C. M. KORNBLUTH
Doing something for humanity may be fine--for humanity--but rough on the individual!
He had quite a rum-blossom on him for a kid, I thought at first. But when he moved closer to the light by the cash register to ask the bartender for a match or something, I saw it wasn't that. Not just the nose. Broken veins on his cheeks, too, and the funny eyes. He must have seen me look, because he slid back away from the light.
The bartender shook my bottle of ale in front of me like a Swiss bell-ringer so it foamed inside the green glass.
"You ready for another, sir?" he asked.
I shook my head. Down the bar, he tried it on the kid--he was drinking scotch and water or something like that--and found out he could push him around. He sold him three scotch and waters in ten minutes.
When he tried for number four, the kid had his courage up and said, "I'll tell you when I'm ready for another, Jack." But there wasn't any trouble.
It was almost nine and the place began to fill up. The manager, a real hood type, stationed himself by the door to screen out the high-school kids and give the big hello to conventioneers. The girls came hurrying in, too, with their little makeup cases and their fancy hair piled up and their frozen faces with the perfect mouths drawn on them. One of them stopped to say something to the manager, some excuse about something, and he said: "That's aw ri'; get inna dressing room."
A three-piece band behind the drapes at the back of the stage began to make warm-up noises and there were two bartenders keeping busy. Mostly it was beer--a midweek crowd. I finished my ale and had to wait a couple of minutes before I could get another bottle. The bar filled up from the end near the stage because all the customers wanted a good, close look at the strippers for their fifty-cent bottles of beer. But I noticed that nobody sat down next to the kid, or, if anybody did, he didn't stay long--you go out for some fun and the bartender pushes you around and nobody wants to sit next to you. I picked up my bottle and glass and went down on the stool to his left.
He turned to me right away and said: "What kind of a place is this, anyway?" The broken veins were all over his face, little ones, but so many, so close, that they made his face look something like marbled rubber. The funny look in his eyes was it--the trick contact lenses. But I tried not to stare and not to look away.
"It's okay," I said. "It's a good show if you don't mind a lot of noise from--"
He stuck a cigarette into his mouth and poked the pack at me. "I'm a spacer," he said, interrupting.
I took one of his cigarettes and said: "Oh."
He snapped a lighter for the cigarettes and said: "Venus."
* * * * *
I was noticing that his pack of cigarettes on the bar had some kind of yellow sticker instead of the blue tax stamp.
"Ain't that a crock?" he asked. "You can't smoke and they give you lighters for a souvenir. But it's a good lighter. On Mars last week, they gave us all some cheap pen-and-pencil sets."
"You get something every trip, hah?" I took a good, long drink of ale and he finished his scotch and water.
"Shoot. You call a trip a 'shoot'."
One of the girls was working her way down the bar. She was going to slide onto the empty stool at his right and give him the business, but she looked at him first and decided not to. She curled around me and asked if I'd buy her a li'l ole drink. I said no and she moved on to the next. I could kind of feel the young fellow quivering. When I looked at him, he stood up. I followed him out of the dump. The manager grinned without thinking and said, "G'night, boys," to us.
The kid stopped in the street and said to me: "You don't have to follow me around, Pappy." He sounded like one wrong word and I would get socked in the teeth.
"Take it easy. I know a place where they won't spit in your eye."
He pulled himself together and made a joke of it. "This I have to see," he said. "Near here?"
"A few blocks."
We started walking. It was a nice night.
"I don't know this city at all," he said. "I'm from Covington, Kentucky. You do your drinking at home there. We don't have places like this." He meant the whole Skid Row area.
"It's not so bad," I said. "I spend a lot of time here."
"Is that a fact? I mean, down home a man your age would likely have a wife and children."
"I do. The hell with them."
He laughed like a real youngster and I figured he couldn't even be twenty-five. He didn't have any trouble with the broken curbstones in spite of his scotch and waters. I asked him about it.
"Sense of balance," he said. "You have to be tops for balance to be a spacer--you spend so much time outside in a suit. People don't know how much. Punctures. And you aren't worth a damn if you lose your point."
"What's that mean?"
"Oh. Well, it's hard to describe. When you're outside and you lose your point, it means you're all mixed up, you don't know which way the can--that's the ship--which way the can is. It's having all that room around you. But if you have a good balance, you feel a little tugging to the ship, or maybe you just know which way the ship is without feeling it. Then you have your point and you can get the work done."
"There must be a lot that's hard to describe."
He thought that might be a crack and he clammed up on me.
"You call this Gandytown," I said after a while. "It's where the stove-up old railroad men hang out. This is the place."
* * * * *
It was the second week of the month, before everybody's pension check was all gone. Oswiak's was jumping. The Grandsons of the Pioneers were on the juke singing the Man from Mars Yodel and old Paddy Shea was jigging in the middle of the floor. He had a full seidel of beer in his right hand and his empty left sleeve was flapping.
The kid balked at the screen door. "Too damn bright," he said.
I shrugged and went on in and he followed. We sat down at a table. At Oswiak's you can drink at the bar if you want to, but none of the regulars do.
Paddy jigged over and said: "Welcome home, Doc." He's a Liverpool Irishman; they talk like Scots, some say, but they sound almost like Brooklyn to me.
"Hello, Paddy. I brought somebody uglier than you. Now what do you say?"
Paddy jigged around the kid in a half-circle with his sleeve flapping and then flopped into a chair when the record stopped. He took a big drink from the seidel and said: "Can he do this?" Paddy stretched his face into an awful grin that showed his teeth. He has three of them. The kid laughed and asked me: "What the hell did you drag me into here for?"
"Paddy says he'll buy drinks for the house the day anybody uglier than he is comes in."
Oswiak's wife waddled over for the order and the kid asked us what we'd have. I figured I could start drinking, so it was three double scotches.
After the second round, Paddy started blowing about how they took his arm off without any anesthetics except a bottle of gin because the red-ball freight he was tangled up in couldn't wait.
That brought some of the other old gimps over to the table with their stories.
Blackie Bauer had been sitting in a boxcar with his legs sticking through the door when the train started with a jerk. Wham, the door closed. Everybody laughed at Blackie for being that dumb in the first place, and he got mad.
Sam Fireman has palsy. This week he was claiming he used to be a watchmaker before he began to shake. The week before, he'd said he was a brain surgeon. A woman I didn't know, a real old Boxcar Bertha, dragged herself over and began some kind of story about how her sister married a Greek, but she passed out before we found out what happened.
Somebody wanted to know what was wrong with the kid's face--Bauer, I think it was, after he came back to the table.
"Compression and decompression," the kid said. "You're all the time climbing into your suit and out of your suit. Inboard air's thin to start with. You get a few redlines--that's these ruptured blood vessels--and you say the hell with the money; all you'll make is just one more trip. But, God, it's a lot of money for anybody my age! You keep saying that until you can't be anything but a spacer. The eyes are hard-radiation scars."
"You like dot all ofer?" asked Oswiak's wife politely.
"All over, ma'am," the kid told her in a miserable voice. "But I'm going to quit before I get a Bowman Head."
"I don't care," said Maggie Rorty. "I think he's cute."
"Compared with--" Paddy began, but I kicked him under the table.
* * * * *
We sang for a while, and then we told gags and recited limericks for a while, and I noticed that the kid and Maggie had wandered into the back room--the one with the latch on the door.
Oswiak's wife asked me, very puzzled: "Doc, w'y dey do dot flyink by planyets?"
"It's the damn govermint," Sam Fireman said.
"Why not?" I said. "They got the Bowman Drive, why the hell shouldn't they use it? Serves 'em right." I had a double scotch and added: "Twenty years of it and they found out a few things they didn't know. Redlines are only one of them. Twenty years more, maybe they'll find out a few more things they didn't know. Maybe by the time there's a bathtub in every American home and an alcoholism clinic in every American town, they'll find out a whole lot of things they didn't know. And every American boy will be a pop-eyed, blood-raddled wreck, like our friend here, from riding the Bowman Drive."
"It's the damn govermint," Sam Fireman repeated.
"And what the hell did you mean by that remark about alcoholism?" Paddy said, real sore. "Personally, I can take it or leave it alone."
So we got to talking about that and everybody there turned out to be people who could take it or leave it alone.
* * * * *
It was maybe midnight when the kid showed at the table again, looking kind of dazed. I was drunker than I ought to be by midnight, so I said I was going for a walk. He tagged along and we wound up on a bench at Screwball Square. The soap-boxers were still going strong. Like I said, it was a nice night. After a while, a pot-bellied old auntie who didn't give a damn about the face sat down and tried to talk the kid into going to see some etchings. The kid didn't get it and I led him over to hear the soap-boxers before there was trouble.
One of the orators was a mush-mouthed evangelist. "And, oh, my friends," he said, "when I looked through the porthole of the spaceship and beheld the wonder of the Firmament--"
"You're a stinkin' Yankee liar!" the kid yelled at him. "You say one damn more word about can-shootin' and I'll ram your spaceship down your lyin' throat! Wheah's your redlines if you're such a hot spacer?"
The crowd didn't know what he was talking about, but "wheah's your redlines" sounded good to them, so they heckled mush-mouth off his box with it.
I got the kid to a bench. The liquor was working in him all of a sudden. He simmered down after a while and asked: "Doc, should I've given Miz Rorty some money? I asked her afterward and she said she'd admire to have something to remember me by, so I gave her my lighter. She seem' to be real pleased with it. But I was wondering if maybe I embarrassed her by asking her right out. Like I tol' you, back in Covington, Kentucky, we don't have places like that. Or maybe we did and I just didn't know about them. But what do you think I should've done about Miz Rorty?"
"Just what you did," I told him. "If they want money, they ask you for it first. Where you staying?"
"Y.M.C.A.," he said, almost asleep. "Back in Covington, Kentucky, I was a member of the Y and I kept up my membership. They have to let me in because I'm a member. Spacers have all kinds of trouble, Doc. Woman trouble. Hotel trouble. Fam'ly trouble. Religious trouble. I was raised a Southern Baptist, but wheah's Heaven, anyway? I ask' Doctor Chitwood las' time home before the redlines got so thick--Doc, you aren't a minister of the Gospel, are you? I hope I di'n' say anything to offend you."
"No offense, son," I said. "No offense."
I walked him to the avenue and waited for a fleet cab. It was almost five minutes. The independents that roll drunks dent the fenders of fleet cabs if they show up in Skid Row and then the fleet drivers have to make reports on their own time to the company. It keeps them away. But I got one and dumped the kid in.
"The Y Hotel," I told the driver. "Here's five. Help him in when you get there."
* * * * *
When I walked through Screwball Square again, some college kids were yelling "wheah's your redlines" at old Charlie, the last of the Wobblies.
Old Charlie kept roaring: "The hell with your breadlines! I'm talking about atomic bombs. Right--up--there!" And he pointed at the Moon.
It was a nice night, but the liquor was dying in me.
There was a joint around the corner, so I went in and had a drink to carry me to the club; I had a bottle there. I got into the first cab that came.
"Athletic Club," I said.
"Inna dawghouse, harh?" the driver said, and he gave me a big personality smile.
I didn't say anything and he started the car.
He was right, of course. I was in everybody's doghouse. Some day I'd scare hell out of Tom and Lise by going home and showing them what their daddy looked like.
Down at the Institute, I was in the doghouse.
"Oh, dear," everybody at the Institute said to everybody, "I'm sure I don't know what ails the man. A lovely wife and two lovely grown children and she had to tell him 'either you go or I go.' And drinking! And this is rather subtle, but it's a well-known fact that neurotics seek out low company to compensate for their guilt-feelings. The places he frequents. Doctor Francis Bowman, the man who made space-flight a reality. The man who put the Bomb Base on the Moon! Really, I'm sure I don't know what ails him."
The hell with them all.
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER
By ROGER KUYKENDALL
Some men just haven't got good sense. They just can't seem to learn the most fundamental things. Like when there's no use trying--when it's time to give up because it's hopeless....
The meteor, a pebble, a little larger than a match head, traveled through space and time since it came into being. The light from the star that died when the meteor was created fell on Earth before the first lungfish ventured from the sea.
In its last instant, the meteor fell on the Moon. It was impeded by Evans' tractor.
It drilled a small, neat hole through the casing of the steam turbine, and volitized upon striking the blades. Portions of the turbine also volitized; idling at eight thousand RPM, it became unstable. The shaft tried to tie itself into a knot, and the blades, damaged and undamaged were spit through the casing. The turbine again reached a stable state, that is, stopped. Permanently stopped.
It was two days to sunrise, where Evans stood.
It was just before sunset on a spring evening in September in Sydney. The shadow line between day and night could be seen from the Moon to be drifting across Australia.
Evans, who had no watch, thought of the time as a quarter after Australia.
Evans was a prospector, and like all prospectors, a sort of jackknife geologist, selenologist, rather. His tractor and equipment cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Fifty thousand was paid for. The rest was promissory notes and grubstake shares. When he was broke, which was usually, he used his tractor to haul uranium ore and metallic sodium from the mines at Potter's dike to Williamson Town, where the rockets landed.
When he was flush, he would prospect for a couple of weeks. Once he followed a stampede to Yellow Crater, where he thought for a while that he had a fortune in chromium. The chromite petered out in a month and a half, and he was lucky to break even.
Evans was about three hundred miles east of Williamson Town, the site of the first landing on the Moon.
Evans was due back at Williamson Town at about sunset, that is, in about sixteen days. When he saw the wrecked turbine, he knew that he wouldn't make it. By careful rationing, he could probably stretch his food out to more than a month. His drinking water--kept separate from the water in the reactor--might conceivably last just as long. But his oxygen was too carefully measured; there was a four-day reserve. By diligent conservation, he might make it last an extra day. Four days reserve--plus one is five--plus sixteen days normal supply equals twenty-one days to live.
In seventeen days he might be missed, but in seventeen days it would be dark again, and the search for him, if it ever began, could not begin for thirteen more days. At the earliest it would be eight days too late.
* * * * *
"Well, man, 'tis a fine spot you're in now," he told himself.
"Let's find out how bad it is indeed," he answered. He reached for the light switch and tried to turn it on. The switch was already in the "on" position.
"Batteries must be dead," he told himself.
"What batteries?" he asked. "There're no batteries in here, the power comes from the generator."
"Why isn't the generator working, man?" he asked.
He thought this one out carefully. The generator was not turned by the main turbine, but by a small reciprocating engine. The steam, however, came from the same boiler. And the boiler, of course, had emptied itself through the hole in the turbine. And the condenser, of course--
"The condenser!" he shouted.
He fumbled for a while, until he found a small flashlight. By the light of this, he reinspected the steam system, and found about three gallons of water frozen in the condenser. The condenser, like all condensers, was a device to convert steam into water, so that it could be reused in the boiler. This one had a tank and coils of tubing in the center of a curved reflector that was positioned to radiate the heat of the steam into the cold darkness of space. When the meteor pierced the turbine, the water in the condenser began to boil. This boiling lowered the temperature, and the condenser demonstrated its efficiency by quickly freezing the water in the tank.
Evans sealed the turbine from the rest of the steam system by closing the shut-off valves. If there was any water in the boiler, it would operate the engine that drove the generator. The water would condense in the condenser, and with a little luck, melt the ice in there. Then, if the pump wasn't blocked by ice, it would return the water to the boiler.
But there was no water in the boiler. Carefully he poured a cup of his drinking water into a pipe that led to the boiler, and resealed the pipe. He pulled on a knob marked "Nuclear Start/Safety Bypass." The water that he had poured into the boiler quickly turned into steam, and the steam turned the generator briefly.
Evans watched the lights flicker and go out, and he guessed what the trouble was.
"The water, man," he said, "there is not enough to melt the ice in the condenser."
He opened the pipe again and poured nearly a half-gallon of water into the boiler. It was three days' supply of water, if it had been carefully used. It was one day's supply if used wastefully. It was ostentatious luxury for a man with a month's supply of water and twenty-one days to live.
The generator started again, and the lights came on. They flickered as the boiler pressure began to fail, but the steam had melted some of the ice in the condenser, and the water pump began to function.
"Well, man," he breathed, "there's a light to die by."
* * * * *
The sun rose on Williamson Town at about the same time it rose on Evans. It was an incredibly brilliant disk in a black sky. The stars next to the sun shone as brightly as though there were no sun. They might have appeared to waver slightly, if they were behind outflung corona flares. If they did, no one noticed. No one looked toward the sun without dark filters.
When Director McIlroy came into his office, he found it lighted by the rising sun. The light was a hot, brilliant white that seemed to pierce the darkest shadows of the room. He moved to the round window, screening his eyes from the light, and adjusted the polaroid shade to maximum density. The sun became an angry red brown, and the room was dark again. McIlroy decreased the density again until the room was comfortably lighted. The room felt stuffy, so he decided to leave the door to the inner office open.
He felt a little guilty about this, because he had ordered that all doors in the survey building should remain closed except when someone was passing through them. This was to allow the air-conditioning system to function properly, and to prevent air loss in case of the highly improbable meteor damage. McIlroy thought that on the whole, he was disobeying his own orders no more flagrantly than anyone else in the survey.
McIlroy had no illusions about his ability to lead men. Or rather, he did have one illusion; he thought that he was completely unfit as a leader. It was true that his strictest orders were disobeyed with cheerful contempt, but it was also true his mildest requests were complied with eagerly and smoothly.
Everyone in the survey except McIlroy realized this, and even he accepted this without thinking about it. He had fallen into the habit of suggesting mildly anything that he wanted done, and writing orders he didn't particularly care to have obeyed.
For example, because of an order of his stating that there would be no alcoholic beverages within the survey building, the entire survey was assured of a constant supply of home-made, but passably good liquor. Even McIlroy enjoyed the surreptitious drinking.
"Good morning, Mr. McIlroy," said Mrs. Garth, his secretary. Morning to Mrs. Garth was simply the first four hours after waking.
"Good morning indeed," answered McIlroy. Morning to him had no meaning at all, but he thought in the strictest sense that it would be morning on the Moon for another week.
"Has the power crew set up the solar furnace?" he asked. The solar furnace was a rough parabola of mirrors used to focus the sun's heat on anything that it was desirable to heat. It was used mostly, from sun-up to sun-down, to supplement the nuclear power plant.
"They went out about an hour ago," she answered, "I suppose that's what they were going to do."
"Very good, what's first on the schedule?"
"A Mr. Phelps to see you," she said.
"How do you do, Mr. Phelps," McIlroy greeted him.
"Good afternoon," Mr. Phelps replied. "I'm here representing the Merchants' Bank Association."
"Fine," McIlroy said, "I suppose you're here to set up a bank."
"That's right, I just got in from Muroc last night, and I've been going over the assets of the Survey Credit Association all morning."
"I'll certainly be glad to get them off my hands," McIlroy said. "I hope they're in good order."
"There doesn't seem to be any profit," Mr. Phelps said.
"That's par for a nonprofit organization," said McIlroy. "But we're amateurs, and we're turning this operation over to professionals. I'm sure it will be to everyone's satisfaction."
"I know this seems like a silly question. What day is this?"
"Well," said McIlroy, "that's not so silly. I don't know either."
"Mrs. Garth," he called, "what day is this?"
"Why, September, I think," she answered.
"I mean what day."
"I don't know, I'll call the observatory."
There was a pause.
"They say what day where?" she asked.
"Greenwich, I guess, our official time is supposed to be Greenwich Mean Time."
There was another pause.
"They say it's September fourth, one thirty A.M."
"Well, there you are," laughed McIlroy, "it isn't that time doesn't mean anything here, it just doesn't mean the same thing."
Mr. Phelps joined the laughter. "Bankers' hours don't mean much, at any rate," he said.
* * * * *
The power crew was having trouble with the solar furnace. Three of the nine banks of mirrors would not respond to the electric controls, and one bank moved so jerkily that it could not be focused, and it threatened to tear several of the mirrors loose.
"What happened here?" Spotty Cade, one of the electrical technicians asked his foreman, Cowalczk, over the intercommunications radio. "I've got about a hundred pinholes in the cables out here. It's no wonder they don't work."
"Meteor shower," Cowalczk answered, "and that's not half of it. Walker says he's got a half dozen mirrors cracked or pitted, and Hoffman on bank three wants you to replace a servo motor. He says the bearing was hit."
"When did it happen?" Cade wanted to know.
"Must have been last night, at least two or three days ago. All of 'em too small for Radar to pick up, and not enough for Seismo to get a rumble."
"Sounds pretty bad."
"Could have been worse," said Cowalczk.
"How's that?"
"Wasn't anybody out in it."
"Hey, Chuck," another technician, Lehman, broke in, "you could maybe get hurt that way."
"I doubt it," Cowalczk answered, "most of these were pinhead size, and they wouldn't go through a suit."
"It would take a pretty big one to damage a servo bearing," Cade commented.
"That could hurt," Cowalczk admitted, "but there was only one of them."
"You mean only one hit our gear," Lehman said. "How many missed?"
Nobody answered. They could all see the Moon under their feet. Small craters overlapped and touched each other. There was--except in the places that men had obscured them with footprints--not a square foot that didn't contain a crater at least ten inches across, there was not a square inch without its half-inch crater. Nearly all of these had been made millions of years ago, but here and there, the rim of a crater covered part of a footprint, clear evidence that it was a recent one.
After the sun rose, Evans returned to the lava cave that he had been exploring when the meteor hit. Inside, he lifted his filter visor, and found that the light reflected from the small ray that peered into the cave door lighted the cave adequately. He tapped loose some white crystals on the cave wall with his geologist's hammer, and put them into a collector's bag.
"A few mineral specimens would give us something to think about, man. These crystals," he said, "look a little like zeolites, but that can't be, zeolites need water to form, and there's no water on the Moon."
He chipped a number of other crystals loose and put them in bags. One of them he found in a dark crevice had a hexagonal shape that puzzled him.
One at a time, back in the tractor, he took the crystals out of the bags and analyzed them as well as he could without using a flame which would waste oxygen. The ones that looked like zeolites were zeolites, all right, or something very much like it. One of the crystals that he thought was quartz turned out to be calcite, and one of the ones that he was sure could be nothing but calcite was actually potassium nitrate.
"Well, now," he said, "it's probably the largest natural crystal of potassium nitrate that anyone has ever seen. Man, it's a full inch across."
All of these needed water to form, and their existence on the Moon puzzled him for a while. Then he opened the bag that had contained the unusual hexagonal crystals, and the puzzle resolved itself. There was nothing in the bag but a few drops of water. What he had taken to be a type of rock was ice, frozen in a niche that had never been warmed by the sun.
* * * * *
The sun rose to the meridian slowly. It was a week after sunrise. The stars shone coldly, and wheeled in their slow course with the sun. Only Earth remained in the same spot in the black sky. The shadow line crept around until Earth was nearly dark, and then the rim of light appeared on the opposite side. For a while Earth was a dark disk in a thin halo, and then the light came to be a crescent, and the line of dawn began to move around Earth. The continents drifted across the dark disk and into the crescent. The people on Earth saw the full moon set about the same time that the sun rose.
* * * * *
Nickel Jones was the captain of a supply rocket. He made trips from and to the Moon about once a month, carrying supplies in and metal and ores out. At this time he was visiting with his old friend McIlroy.
"I swear, Mac," said Jones, "another season like this, and I'm going back to mining."
"I thought you were doing pretty well," said McIlroy, as he poured two drinks from a bottle of Scotch that Jones had brought him.
"Oh, the money I like, but I will say that I'd have more if I didn't have to fight the union and the Lunar Trade Commission."
McIlroy had heard all of this before. "How's that?" he asked politely.
"You may think it's myself running the ship," Jones started on his tirade, "but it's not. The union it is that says who I can hire. The union it is that says how much I must pay, and how large a crew I need. And then the Commission ..." The word seemed to give Jones an unpleasant taste in his mouth, which he hurriedly rinsed with a sip of Scotch.
"The Commission," he continued, making the word sound like an obscenity, "it is that tells me how much I can charge for freight."
McIlroy noticed that his friend's glass was empty, and he quietly filled it again.
"And then," continued Jones, "if I buy a cargo up here, the Commission it is that says what I'll sell it for. If I had my way, I'd charge only fifty cents a pound for freight instead of the dollar forty that the Commission insists on. That's from here to Earth, of course. There's no profit I could make by cutting rates the other way."
"Why not?" asked McIlroy. He knew the answer, but he liked to listen to the slightly Welsh voice of Jones.
"Near cost it is now at a dollar forty. But what sense is there in charging the same rate to go either way when it takes about a seventh of the fuel to get from here to Earth as it does to get from there to here?"
"What good would it do to charge fifty cents a pound?" asked McIlroy.
"The nickel, man, the tons of nickel worth a dollar and a half on Earth, and not worth mining here; the low-grade ores of uranium and vanadium, they need these things on Earth, but they can't get them as long as it isn't worth the carrying of them. And then, of course, there's the water we haven't got. We could afford to bring more water for more people, and set up more distilling plants if we had the money from the nickel.
"Even though I say it who shouldn't, two-eighty a quart is too much to pay for water."
Both men fell silent for a while. Then Jones spoke again:
"Have you seen our friend Evans lately? The price of chromium has gone up, and I think he could ship some of his ore from Yellow Crater at a profit."
"He's out prospecting again. I don't expect to see him until sun-down."
"I'll likely see him then. I won't be loaded for another week and a half. Can't you get in touch with him by radio?"
"He isn't carrying one. Most of the prospectors don't. They claim that a radio that won't carry beyond the horizon isn't any good, and one that will bounce messages from Earth takes up too much room."
"Well, if I don't see him, you let him know about the chromium."
"Anything to help another Welshman, is that the idea?"
"Well, protection it is that a poor Welshman needs from all the English and Scots. Speaking of which--"
"Oh, of course," McIlroy grinned as he refilled the glasses.
"Slainte, McIlroy, bach." [Health, McIlroy, man.]
"Slainte mhor, bach." [Great Health, man.]
* * * * *
The sun was halfway to the horizon, and Earth was a crescent in the sky when Evans had quarried all the ice that was available in the cave. The thought grew on him as he worked that this couldn't be the only such cave in the area. There must be several more bubbles in the lava flow.
Part of his reasoning proved correct. That is, he found that by chipping, he could locate small bubbles up to an inch in diameter, each one with its droplet of water. The average was about one per cent of the volume of each bubble filled with ice.
A quarter of a mile from the tractor, Evans found a promising looking mound of lava. It was rounded on top, and it could easily be the dome of a bubble. Suddenly, Evans noticed that the gauge on the oxygen tank of his suit was reading dangerously near empty. He turned back to his tractor, moving as slowly as he felt safe in doing. Running would use up oxygen too fast. He was halfway there when the pressure warning light went on, and the signal sounded inside his helmet. He turned on his ten-minute reserve supply, and made it to the tractor with about five minutes left. The air purifying apparatus in the suit was not as efficient as the one in the tractor; it wasted oxygen. By using the suit so much, Evans had already shortened his life by several days. He resolved not to leave the tractor again, and reluctantly abandoned his plan to search for a large bubble.
* * * * *
The sun stood at half its diameter above the horizon. The shadows of the mountains stretched out to touch the shadows of the other mountains. The dawning line of light covered half of Earth, and Earth turned beneath it.
Cowalczk itched under his suit, and the sweat on his face prickled maddeningly because he couldn't reach it through his helmet. He pushed his forehead against the faceplate of his helmet and rubbed off some of the sweat. It didn't help much, and it left a blurred spot in his vision. That annoyed him.
"Is everyone clear of the outlet?" he asked.
"All clear," he heard Cade report through the intercom.
"How come we have to blow the boilers now?" asked Lehman.
"Because I say so," Cowalczk shouted, surprised at his outburst and ashamed of it. "Boiler scale," he continued, much calmer. "We've got to clean out the boilers once a year to make sure the tubes in the reactor don't clog up." He squinted through his dark visor at the reactor building, a gray concrete structure a quarter of a mile distant. "It would be pretty bad if they clogged up some night."
"Pressure's ten and a half pounds," said Cade.
"Right, let her go," said Cowalczk.
Cade threw a switch. In the reactor building, a relay closed. A motor started turning, and the worm gear on the motor opened a valve on the boiler. A stream of muddy water gushed into a closed vat. When the vat was about half full, the water began to run nearly clear. An electric eye noted that fact and a light in front of Cade turned on. Cade threw the switch back the other way, and the relay in the reactor building opened. The motor turned and the gears started to close the valve. But a fragment of boiler scale held the valve open.
"Valve's stuck," said Cade.
"Open it and close it again," said Cowalczk. The sweat on his forehead started to run into his eyes. He banged his hand on his faceplate in an unconscious attempt to wipe it off. He cursed silently, and wiped it off on the inside of his helmet again. This time, two drops ran down the inside of his faceplate.
"Still don't work," said Cade.
"Keep trying," Cowalczk ordered. "Lehman, get a Geiger counter and come with me, we've got to fix this thing."
Lehman and Cowalczk, who were already suited up started across to the reactor building. Cade, who was in the pressurized control room without a suit on, kept working the switch back and forth. There was light that indicated when the valve was open. It was on, and it stayed on, no matter what Cade did.
"The vat pressure's too high," Cade said.
"Let me know when it reaches six pounds," Cowalczk requested. "Because it'll probably blow at seven."
The vat was a light plastic container used only to decant sludge out of the water. It neither needed nor had much strength.
"Six now," said Cade.
Cowalczk and Lehman stopped halfway to the reactor. The vat bulged and ruptured. A stream of mud gushed out and boiled dry on the face of the Moon. Cowalczk and Lehman rushed forward again.
They could see the trickle of water from the discharge pipe. The motor turned the valve back and forth in response to Cade's signals.
* * * * *
"What's going on out there?" demanded McIlroy on the intercom.
"Scale stuck in the valve," Cowalczk answered.
"Are the reactors off?"
"Yes. Vat blew. Shut up! Let me work, Mac!"
"Sorry," McIlroy said, realizing that this was no time for officials. "Let me know when it's fixed."
"Geiger's off scale," Lehman said.
"We're probably O.K. in these suits for an hour," Cowalczk answered. "Is there a manual shut-off?"
"Not that I know of," Lehman answered. "What about it, Cade?"
"I don't think so," Cade said. "I'll get on the blower and rouse out an engineer."
"O.K., but keep working that switch."
"I checked the line as far as it's safe," said Lehman. "No valve."
* * * * *
"O.K.," Cowalczk said. "Listen, Cade, are the injectors still on?"
"Yeah. There's still enough heat in these reactors to do some damage. I'll cut 'em in about fifteen minutes."
"I've found the trouble," Lehman said. "The worm gear's loose on its shaft. It's slipping every time the valve closes. There's not enough power in it to crush the scale."
"Right," Cowalczk said. "Cade, open the valve wide. Lehman, hand me that pipe wrench!"
Cowalczk hit the shaft with the back of the pipe wrench, and it broke at the motor bearing.
Cowalczk and Lehman fitted the pipe wrench to the gear on the valve, and turned it.
"Is the light off?" Cowalczk asked.
"No," Cade answered.
"Water's stopped. Give us some pressure, we'll see if it holds."
"Twenty pounds," Cade answered after a couple of minutes.
"Take her up to ... no, wait, it's still leaking," Cowalczk said. "Hold it there, we'll open the valve again."
"O.K.," said Cade. "An engineer here says there's no manual cutoff."
"Like Hell," said Lehman.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened the valve again. Water spurted out, and dwindled as they closed the valve.
"What did you do?" asked Cade. "The light went out and came on again."
"Check that circuit and see if it works," Cowalczk instructed.
There was a pause.
"It's O.K.," Cade said.
Cowalczk and Lehman opened and closed the valve again.
"Light is off now," Cade said.
"Good," said Cowalczk, "take the pressure up all the way, and we'll see what happens."
"Eight hundred pounds," Cade said, after a short wait.
"Good enough," Cowalczk said. "Tell that engineer to hold up a while, he can fix this thing as soon as he gets parts. Come on, Lehman, let's get out of here."
"Well, I'm glad that's over," said Cade. "You guys had me worried for a while."
"Think we weren't worried?" Lehman asked. "And it's not over."
"What?" Cade asked. "Oh, you mean the valve servo you two bashed up?"
"No," said Lehman, "I mean the two thousand gallons of water that we lost."
"Two thousand?" Cade asked. "We only had seven hundred gallons reserve. How come we can operate now?"
"We picked up twelve hundred from the town sewage plant. What with using the solar furnace as a radiator, we can make do."
"Oh, God, I suppose this means water rationing again."
"You're probably right, at least until the next rocket lands in a couple of weeks."
* * * * *
PROSPECTOR FEARED LOST ON MOON
IPP Williamson Town, Moon, Sept. 21st. Scientific survey director McIlroy released a statement today that Howard Evans, a prospector is missing and presumed lost. Evans, who was apparently exploring the Moon in search of minerals was due two days ago, but it was presumed that he was merely temporarily delayed.
Evans began his exploration on August 25th, and was known to be carrying several days reserve of oxygen and supplies. Director McIlroy has expressed a hope that Evans will be found before his oxygen runs out.
Search parties have started from Williamson Town, but telescopic search from Palomar and the new satellite observatory are hindered by the fact that Evans is lost on the part of the Moon which is now dark. Little hope is held for radio contact with the missing man as it is believed he was carrying only short-range, intercommunications equipment. Nevertheless, receivers are ...
Captain Nickel Jones was also expressing a hope: "Anyway, Mac," he was saying to McIlroy, "a Welshman knows when his luck's run out. And never a word did he say."
"Like as not, you're right," McIlroy replied, "but if I know Evans, he'd never say a word about any forebodings."
"Well, happen I might have a bit of Welsh second sight about me, and it tells me that Evans will be found."
McIlroy chuckled for the first time in several days. "So that's the reason you didn't take off when you were scheduled," he said.
"Well, yes," Jones answered. "I thought that it might happen that a rocket would be needed in the search."
The light from Earth lighted the Moon as the Moon had never lighted Earth. The great blue globe of Earth, the only thing larger than the stars, wheeled silently in the sky. As it turned, the shadow of sunset crept across the face that could be seen from the Moon. From full Earth, as you might say, it moved toward last quarter.
The rising sun shone into Director McIlroy's office. The hot light formed a circle on the wall opposite the window, and the light became more intense as the sun slowly pulled over the horizon. Mrs. Garth walked into the director's office, and saw the director sleeping with his head cradled in his arms on the desk. She walked softly to the window and adjusted the shade to darken the office. She stood looking at McIlroy for a moment, and when he moved slightly in his sleep, she walked softly out of the office.
A few minutes later she was back with a cup of coffee. She placed it in front of the director, and shook his shoulder gently.
"Wake up, Mr. McIlroy," she said, "you told me to wake you at sunrise, and there it is, and here's Mr. Phelps."
McIlroy woke up slowly. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. His neck was stiff from sleeping in such an awkward position.
"'Morning, Mr. Phelps," he said.
"Good morning," Phelps answered, dropping tiredly into a chair.
"Have some coffee, Mr. Phelps," said Mrs. Garth, handing him a cup.
"Any news?" asked McIlroy.
"About Evans?" Phelps shook his head slowly. "Palomar called in a few minutes back. Nothing to report and the sun was rising there. Australia will be in position pretty soon. Several observatories there. Then Capetown. There are lots of observatories in Europe, but most of them are clouded over. Anyway the satellite observatory will be in position by the time Europe is."
McIlroy was fully awake. He glanced at Phelps and wondered how long it had been since he had slept last. More than that, McIlroy wondered why this banker, who had never met Evans, was losing so much sleep about finding him. It began to dawn on McIlroy that nearly the whole population of Williamson Town was involved, one way or another, in the search.
The director turned to ask Phelps about this fact, but the banker was slumped in his chair, fast asleep with his coffee untouched.
It was three hours later that McIlroy woke Phelps.
"They've found the tractor," McIlroy said.
"Good," Phelps mumbled, and then as comprehension came; "That's fine! That's just line! Is Evans--?"
"Can't tell yet. They spotted the tractor from the satellite observatory. Captain Jones took off a few minutes ago, and he'll report back as soon as he lands. Hadn't you better get some sleep?"
* * * * *
Evans was carrying a block of ice into the tractor when he saw the rocket coming in for a landing. He dropped the block and stood waiting. When the dust settled from around the tail of the rocket, he started to run forward. The air lock opened, and Evans recognized the vacuum suited figure of Nickel Jones.
"Evans, man!" said Jones' voice in the intercom. "Alive you are!"
"A Welshman takes a lot of killing," Evans answered.
* * * * *
Later, in Evans' tractor, he was telling his story:
"... And I don't know how long I sat there after I found the water." He looked at the Goldburgian device he had made out of wire and tubing. "Finally I built this thing. These caves were made of lava. They must have been formed by steam some time, because there's a floor of ice in all of 'em.
"The idea didn't come all at once, it took a long time for me to remember that water is made out of oxygen and hydrogen. When I remembered that, of course, I remembered that it can be separated with electricity. So I built this thing.
"It runs an electric current through water, lets the oxygen loose in the room, and pipes the hydrogen outside. It doesn't work automatically, of course, so I run it about an hour a day. My oxygen level gauge shows how long."
"You're a genius, man!" Jones exclaimed.
"No," Evans answered, "a Welshman, nothing more."
"Well, then," said Jones, "are you ready to start back?"
"Back?"
"Well, it was to rescue you that I came."
"I don't need rescuing, man," Evans said.
Jones stared at him blankly.
"You might let me have some food," Evans continued. "I'm getting short of that. And you might have someone send out a mechanic with parts to fix my tractor. Then maybe you'll let me use your radio to file my claim."
"Claim?"
"Sure, man, I've thousands of tons of water here. It's the richest mine on the Moon!"
THE END
JOIN OUR GANG?
By STERLING E. LANIER
They didn't exactly hold a gun at anybody's head; all they offered was help. Of course, they did sort of encourage people to ask for help....
Commander William Powers, subleader of Survey Group Sirian Combine--1027798 and hence first officer of its ship, the Benefactor, stared coldly out of his cabin port. The Benefactor was resting on the bedrock of Island Twenty-seven of the world called Mureess by its natives. Like all the other such names, it meant "the world," just as the natives' name for themselves, Falsethsa, meant "the people," or "us," or "the only race." To Commander Powers, fifty years old, with eleven of them in Survey work, the world was Planet Two of a star called something unpronounceable in the nebula of something else equally pointless. He had not bothered to learn the native name of Island Twenty-seven, because his ship had mapped one thousand three hundred and eighty-six islands, all small, and either rocky or swampy or both. Island Twenty-seven, to him, had only one importance, and that was its being the site of the largest city on the planet.
Around the island's seven square miles, a maze of docks, buildings, sheds, breakwaters, and artificial inlets made a maze stretching a mile out to sea in every direction. The gray sea, now covered with fog patches, rolled on the horizon under low-lying cloud. Numerous craft, some small, some large, moved busily about on the water, which in its components was identical with that of Terra, far distant in the Sirius Sector. Crude but workable atomic motors powered most of them, and there was a high proportion of submarines. Powers thought of Earth's oceans for a moment, but then dismissed the thought. Biological technical data were no specialty he needed. Terra might be suitable for the action formulating in his mind, but a thousand suns of Sirian Combine might prove more useful. The biologists of Grand Base would determine, assisted by data his ship provided, in their monster computers, what was called for. Powers had been trained for different purposes.
He was, as every survey commander was, a battle-hardened warrior. He had fought in two major fleet actions in his day, and had once, as a very junior ensign of the Sirian Grand Fleet, participated in the ultimate horror, the destruction by obliteration of an inhabited planet. For planetary destruction a unanimous vote of the Sirian Grand Council, representing over four thousand worlds, was necessary. It had been given only four times in the long history of the Confederacy. Every intelligent being in the great Union shuddered at the thought of its ever becoming necessary again. Powers stared moodily over the rocky ground toward a group of figures in the distance which were moving in his direction. The final delegation of the Mureess government, a world government, was coming for its last meeting before the Benefactor departed into the far reaches of space.
Powers braced himself mentally for a grand effort. He held equivalent rank to that of a Galactic admiral, and it was held for one reason only, because of his real work and its importance. He was a super-psychologist, a trend-analyzer, a salesman, a promoter, a viewer, an expert on alien symbology and the spearhead of the most ruthless intelligence service in the known universe. Long ago, he had transferred from the battle fleet to the inner school at Sirius Prime for the most intensive training ever devised. Now it would be put to the ultimate test.
He heard the air lock open and turned away from the window. He had a long way to walk to the neutral council chamber, for the Benefactor was a big ship, despite the fact that only twenty beings comprised the total complement. Down the echoing corridors he paced, brow furrowed in thought. Mazechazz would have his own ideas, he knew, but if they made no impression, he would have to put his oar in. Each being on board, whether he breathed halogen or oxygen, ate uranium or protein, had to be independent in thought and action under certain circumstances. The circumstances were here, here and now in his judgment.
He arrived at the door of the Council chamber, and entered, an impressive sight in flaming orange and blue uniform.
Four members of the Supreme Council of the Mureess rose solemnly and inclined their heads in his direction. They were tall bipeds of vaguely reptilian ancestry, most of their height being body. They stood on short powerful legs, terminating in flippered feet, and their long arms were flanged to the second elbow with a rubbery fin. Only four opposed fingers flexed the hands, but the dome-shaped heads and golden eyes screamed intelligence as loudly as the bodies shouted adaption to an aquatic environment. Around the brown torsos, light but efficient harness supported a variety of instruments in noncorrosive metal sheaths. All of the instruments had been discreetly examined by scanning beams and pronounced harmless before any contact had been allowed.
Across the central table, Sakh Mazechazz, of Lyra 8, leader and captain of the Survey stared red-eyed at his executive officer. Mazechazz resembled the delegation far more than he did his own officer, for he, too, had remotely reptilian forbears. Indeed he still sported a flexible tail and, save for his own orange and blue uniform, ablaze with precious stones, resembled nothing so much as a giant Terrestrial chameleon. The uniforms were no accident. Surveymen wore anything or nothing as the case called for it, and the Falsethsa admired bright colors, having few of their own and a good color sense. The gleaming jewels on Mazechazz's uniform stressed his superiority in rank to Powers, as they were meant to.
Of the twenty Surveymen on board the Benefactor, Mazechazz and Powers were the only two who most resembled, in that order, the oxygen-breathing natives of Mureess. That automatically made them captain and executive officer of the Benefactor. The native population saw only the captain and executive officer of the ship, and only the council chamber. On a world of ammonia breathers, Mazechazz and Powers would have been invisible in their own part of the ship providing advice only to the Skorak of Marga 10, Lambdem, and perhaps Nyur of Antares-bi-12. If a suspicious native saw an entity with whom he could feel a remote relationship giving orders to a weird-looking, far more, alien creature, a feeling of confidence might appear.
Since Mazechazz came from a planet of super-heated desert and scrub resembling the Karoo of South Africa, the resemblance could have been bettered, but it was well within the allowable limits set forth in the Inner Mandate. And in Galactic Psychology, every trick counted. For persuasion was the chief weapon of the Sirian Combine. Outright force was absolutely forbidden, save by the aforesaid vote of the council. Every weapon in the book of persuasion was used to bring intelligent races into the Combine, and persuasion is a thing of infinite variety.
As these thoughts flashed through Powers' mind, he seated himself in a plain chair and adjusted the Universal Speaker to his mouth. Beside him, on a more elaborate chair, tailored to fit his tail, Mazechazz did the same, while the four Falsethsa seated themselves on low stools and took similar instruments from the oblong table which separated them from the two Surveymen. Deep in the bowels of the ship, a giant translator switched on, to simultaneously translate and record the mutually alien tongues as they were spoken. Adjustable extensions on the speakers brought the sound to the bone of the skull. For different life forms, different instruments would have been necessary and were provided for.
Mazechazz, as "captain," opened the proceedings.
"Since this is our last session with you, we hope some fresh proposals have occurred to your honorable council during your absence," hummed the speaker through Powers' skull.
He who was designated First among the council of the Mureess answered.
"We have no new proposals, nor indeed had we ever any. Trade would be welcome, but we vitally need nothing you or your Combine have described, captain. We have all the minerals we need and the Great Mother--he meant the sea--provides food. We will soon go into space ourselves and meet as equals with you. We cannot tolerate what you call an 'observer,' who seems to us a spy, and not subject to our laws by your own definition. That is all we have to say."
That does it, thought Powers glumly. The cold--and entirely accurate--description of a Planetary representative of the Sirian Combine was the final clincher. The intensely proud and chauvinistic Falsethsa would tolerate no interference.
Mazechazz gave no indication that he had heard. He tried again.
"In addition to trade and education, general advancement of the populace," murmured the mike, "have you considered defense?" He paused. "Not all races who travel in space are friendly. A few are starkly inimical, hating all other forms of life. Could you defend yourselves, Honorable Sirs, against such?"
It was obvious from the speed of the answer that the Council of Mureess had considered, if not anticipated this question. The second member spoke, an obvious pre-assignment.
"In all our long history, you are our first contact with star travelers. Yet we are not defenseless. The Great Mother contains not only food, fish and plants which we harvest, but many strong and terrible beasts. Very few are left to disturb us. In addition, the implications of your ship have not escaped us, and our scientists are even now adapting some of our atomic devices used in mining to other ends." The voice contained a faint hint of pride as it ended. We got guns, too, buddy, it said, and we ain't pushovers.
The First of the Council spoke again. "Let me be plain, Respected Star-farers. It seems obvious to us that you have learned most of what we represent as a council, if not all. We are the heads of the Great Clans and we will not change. It hardly seems likely that you represent a society based on heredity if you include the diverse and nameless breeds of creature you have shown us on your screens. We do not want such an amalgam on our world causing unrest and disturbances of public order. Still less do we desire authoritarian interference with the ordered life we have developed. Your requests are one and severally refused. There will be no 'observer.' Trade, regulated by us, will be welcome. Otherwise, should you choose not to be bound by our laws, we must respectfully and finally bid you farewell. When at some future date, we develop ships such as yours, we may reconsider." The speaker paused, looked at his three confreres, who nodded silently. The First stared arrogantly at Mazechazz, and continued.
"Finally, we have decided to place a ban on further landings by aliens unless you are now prepared to negotiate a trade agreement on our terms!"
Powers thought frantically, his face motionless. This was defeat, stark and unequivocal. The parable he had in mind seemed indicated now or never. He turned to Sakh Mazechazz, and spoke.
"May I have your permission to address the Honored Council, Noble Captain?" he asked.
"Speak, First Officer," said the Lyran, his gular pouches throbbing. His ruby eyes, to his associate, looked pained, as well they might.
"Let me pose a question, Honored Sirs," said Powers. "Suppose that in your early history of creating your orderly realm you had discovered on one of your islands a race of Falsethsa as advanced and regulated as yourselves who wished nothing to do with you?" He could feel the alerted tension of the four as the golden eyes glowed at him.
"The implications of your question are obvious," the First of the Council spoke, as coldly as ever. "Do you threaten us with force from your Combine devoted to peace?" The flat voice of the translator hummed with acquired and impossible violence which Powers knew to be subjective.
The First continued. "We would resist to the ultimate, down to the least of our young and the most helpless female weed cultivator! Do your worst!"
Powers sat back. He had done his best. The hereditary dictatorship of a united world had spoken. No democratic minority had ever raised its head here. The society of Mureess was stratified in a way ancient India never thought of being, down to refuse collectors of a thousand generations of dishonorable standing. Ancient Japan had been as rigidly exclusionist but there had been a progressive element there. Here there was nothing. Nothing that is, except a united world of coldly calculating and very advanced entities about to erupt into space with Heaven knew what weapons and a murderous arrogance and race pride to bolster them.
He thought of the dead orb called Sebelia, rolling around its worthless sun, an object of nausea to all life. And he had helped. Well, the boys in Biology had the ball now. He forced himself to listen to the First of Council as he bade Mazechazz a courteous farewell.
"Depart in harmony and peace, Honorable Star-farers. May your Great Mother be benign, when you return to give your high council our message on the far-distant worlds you have shown us in the sky."
The Council departed, leaving Powers and Mazechazz staring at each other in the council chamber, their gaudy uniforms looking a little dull and drab.
"Well, Sakh," said Powers, his ruddy face a little flushed, "we can't be perfect. They don't know about spacewarps and instantaneous communicators. Plan II has nothing to do with us."
"Beyond our recommendation, you mean," said the Lyran flatly. "We have failed, William. This means death for thousands of innocent beings, perhaps more. Their world population is about eighty million, you know."
There was silence in the room until Powers broke it again.
"Would you have Sebelia, Sakh," he asked gently, "or Ruller I, Bellevan's world, or Labath?" There was no answer to this and he knew it. There was only one alternative to a dead, burned-out, empty planet. Mureess was in the wrong stage of development, and it would have to be brought in line. The Sirian Combine had to, and would remove any intelligent unknown menace from a position from which it could threaten its Master plan of integrated peace. As they left the chamber, Powers said a silent prayer and touched the tiny Crescent and Star embroidered on his shirt pocket. At least, he thought, the planted ultra-wave communicators would be there when the Falsethsa needed them. He looked out of a corridor port at the gray and rolling sea. The Great Mother, he thought bitterly, benevolent and overflowing!
Traleres-124, female gardener, aged thirty-two cycles, hummed in a minor key as she harvested weed of the solstice crop, twelve miles off the northern islands. A rest period was due in the next cycle day, and she and her mate were ahead of quota which should make the supervisor give them a good holiday.
The tall weed swayed gently against her and several small fish darted past in fright. As the first heavy beat of the water struck against her slim body, she looked up. Frozen with horror, she released her container, but in forty feet of water, the monster caught her before she had moved a hundred yards.
As it fed, horribly, other grim shapes, attracted by the blood moved in from the distant murk of deeper water.
Savathake-er rode his one-man torpedo alertly as he probed the southern bay of Ramasarett. He was a scientist-12 and also a hereditary hunter. If the giant fish, long since eliminated from the rest of the seas, were breeding in some secret area of the far and desolate southern rocks, it was his business to know it. No fish could catch his high-powered torpedo, while his electric spears packed a lethal jolt. Probably, he thought, a rumor of the poor fisher folk who worked the southern fringe areas. What else could you expect from such types, who had never even learned to read in a thousand cycles. Nevertheless, as he patrolled the sunken rocks, he was alert, scanning the water on all sides constantly for the great shape he sought, his skin alert for the first strange vibration. By neglecting the broken bottom, brown with laminaria and kelp, he missed the great, mottled tentacle which plucked him off his torpedo in a flash of movement, leaving the riderless craft to cruise aimlessly away into the distance.
"Your highness," said the Supervisor Supreme, "we are helpless. We have never used metal nets, because we have never had to. Our fiber nets they slash to ribbons. They attack every species of food-fish from the Ursaa to the Krad. The breeding rate is fantastic, and now my equal who controls the mines says they are attacking the miners despite all the protection he can give them. They are not large, but in millions----"
"Cease your outcries," said the First in Council, wearily, "and remove that animal from my writing desk. I have seen many pictures of it since they first appeared five cycles ago. It still looks alien and repulsive."
They stared in silence at the shape that any high-school biology student of distant Terra could have identified in his sleep.
At length, the First in Council dismissed the Supervisor of Fisheries and headed thoughtfully for an inner room of his palace. He knew at last the meaning of the strange metal communicating devices, discovered and confiscated, after the star ship had departed, six cycles before. It was a simple machine to operate, and he guessed food could be sent incredibly quickly to his starving planet. Just as quickly as other things, he thought grimly. And we have to beg. Hah. Admission to the great peace-loving Combine, may the crabs devour them.
But he knew that he would send and that they would come.
"I was comparing the two reports, my friend," said Mazechazz, "but I am not so familiar with your planetary ecology as I should be. When Mureess applied for admission to the Combine, I requested a copy of their secret directive from Biology, but I had never seen the older report until you gave it to me just now. Can you explain the names to me, if I read them off?"
"Go ahead," said Powers, sipping his sherbet noisily. He seldom wondered what alcohol would feel like any longer. Most Old Believers had tried it when young and disliked it.
"I've already looked up the names I didn't know," he said, "so start the Mureessan list first."
"Great White Shark, or Man-eater," read Mazechazz. "He sounds obvious and nasty."
"He is," said Powers. He put down his glass. "Remember, as usual, the birth rate has been at least tripled. An increased metabolism means increased food consumption, and no shark on Terra was ever full. This brute runs forty feet when allowed, in size, that is. A giant carnivorous fish, very tough."
"Number two is Architeuthis, or Giant Squid," continued the Lyran. "Is that a fish? Sorry, but on my world, well, fish are curiosities."
"It's an eyed, carnivorous mollusk with enormous arms, ten of them and it reaches eighty feet long at least. Swims well, too."
There was a moment of silence, then Mazechazz continued. "Smooth dogfish."
"A tiny shark," said Powers, "about three and a half feet in size. They school in thousands on Terra and eat anything that swims. Just blind agile appetite. They have a high normal breeding rate."
"Finally we have a Baleran Salamander, so you're free of one curse, anyway. Balera, I believe, is hellishly wet, although I don't know much about it."
Powers rose and stretched. "He's a little fellow with six legs and a leathery hide. A nuisance on Balera, which is the equivalent of a Terran swamp. He eats every vegetable known, dry or fresh, and, being only two inches long is hard to see. He doesn't bite, just eats things and breeds. There must be millions by now, on each island of Mureess. Then the eggs get carried about. They're tough and adhesive. You can guess what their warehouses looked like."
"At least two million starved before the Council gave in," resumed the Lyran sadly. "But they gave in all the way and abolished caste privilege before the first relief ship even arrived. They'll be full members shortly. And this older report?"
"Read the names," said Powers. He was staring out of the Club window at the stars. "They fed us our own dirt, because we hadn't eliminated all our competitors. Disease means microorganisms, so you choose the largest animal possible with efficiency, that is. Just read the list. My grandparents died, you know, but it had to be done, or we'd have destroyed ourselves. The Combine was a far greater blessing to us than it ever was to Mureess, I can assure you of that!"
He listened in silence as the Lyran read.
"Desmodus, the vampire bat, Rattus Norvegicus, the common rat, Mus Domesticus, the common mouse, The Common Locust, Sylvilagus, the Cottontail Rabbit, Passer Domesticus, the House Sparrow, Sturnus Vulgarus, the European Starling."
Powers sat down and stared at his friend. "Terran life by comparison with many other worlds is terribly tough because we have so many different environments, I suppose. Hence its use on Mureess. Of course, the Combine increased breeding rates again, but adapting that bat to stand cold was the last straw," he said. "The rest of them were all ready and waiting, but the bat was tropical. We'll start with him. Desmodus is a small flying mammal about...."
THE END
DISTURBING SUN
By PHILIP LATHAM
This, be it understood, is fiction--nothing but fiction--and not, under any circumstances, to be considered as having any truth whatever to it. It's obviously utterly impossible ... isn't it?
An interview with Dr. I. M. Niemand, Director of the Psychophysical Institute of Solar and Terrestrial Relations, Camarillo, California.
In the closing days of December, 1957, at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in New York, Dr. Niemand delivered a paper entitled simply, "On the Nature of the Solar S-Regions." Owing to its unassuming title the startling implications contained in the paper were completely overlooked by the press. These implications are discussed here in an exclusive interview with Dr. Niemand by Philip Latham.
LATHAM. Dr. Niemand, what would you say is your main job?
NIEMAND. I suppose you might say my main job today is to find out all I can between activity on the Sun and various forms of activity on the Earth.
LATHAM. What do you mean by activity on the Sun?
NIEMAND. Well, a sunspot is a form of solar activity.
LATHAM. Just what is a sunspot?
NIEMAND. I'm afraid I can't say just what a sunspot is. I can only describe it. A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its surroundings. That's why it looks dark. It isn't so hot. Therefore not so bright.
LATHAM. Isn't it true that the number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of eleven years?
NIEMAND. The number of spots on the Sun rises and falls in a cycle of about eleven years. That word about makes quite a difference.
LATHAM. In what way?
NIEMAND. It means you can only approximately predict the future course of sunspot activity. Sunspots are mighty treacherous things.
LATHAM. Haven't there been a great many correlations announced between sunspots and various effects on the Earth?
NIEMAND. Scores of them.
LATHAM. What is your opinion of these correlations?
NIEMAND. Pure bosh in most cases.
LATHAM. But some are valid?
NIEMAND. A few. There is unquestionably a correlation between sunspots and disturbances of the Earth's magnetic field ... radio fade-outs ... auroras ... things like that.
LATHAM. Now, Dr. Niemand, I understand that you have been investigating solar and terrestrial relationships along rather unorthodox lines.
NIEMAND. Yes, I suppose some people would say so.
LATHAM. You have broken new ground?
NIEMAND. That's true.
LATHAM. In what way have your investigations differed from those of others?
NIEMAND. I think our biggest advance was the discovery that sunspots themselves are not the direct cause of the disturbances we have been studying on the Earth. It's something like the eruptions in rubeola. Attention is concentrated on the bright red papules because they're such a conspicuous symptom of the disease. Whereas the real cause is an invisible filterable virus. In the solar case it turned out to be these S-Regions.
LATHAM. Why S-Regions?
NIEMAND. We had to call them something. Named after the Sun, I suppose.
LATHAM. You say an S-Region is invisible?
NIEMAND. It is quite invisible to the eye but readily detected by suitable instrumental methods. It is extremely doubtful, however, if the radiation we detect is the actual cause of the disturbing effects observed.
LATHAM. Just what are these effects?
NIEMAND. Well, they're common enough, goodness knows. As old as the world, in fact. Yet strangely enough it's hard to describe them in exact terms.
LATHAM. Can you give us a general idea?
NIEMAND. I'll try. Let's see ... remember that speech from "Julius Caesar" where Cassius is bewailing the evil times that beset ancient Rome? I believe it went like this: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings."
LATHAM. I'm afraid I don't see--
NIEMAND. Well, Shakespeare would have been nearer the truth if he had put it the other way around. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in ourselves but in our stars" or better "in the Sun."
* * * * *
LATHAM. In the Sun?
NIEMAND. That's right, in the Sun. I suppose the oldest problem in the world is the origin of human evil. Philosophers have wrestled with it ever since the days of Job. And like Job they have usually given up in despair, convinced that the origin of evil is too deep for the human mind to solve. Generally they have concluded that man is inherently wicked and sinful and that is the end of it. Now for the first time science has thrown new light on this subject.
LATHAM. How is that?
NIEMAND. Consider the record of history. There are occasional periods when conditions are fairly calm and peaceful. Art and industry flourished. Man at last seemed to be making progress toward some higher goal. Then suddenly--for no detectable reason--conditions are reversed. Wars rage. People go mad. The world is plunged into an orgy of bloodshed and misery.
LATHAM. But weren't there reasons?
NIEMAND. What reasons?
LATHAM. Well, disputes over boundaries ... economic rivalry ... border incidents....
NIEMAND. Nonsense. Men always make some flimsy excuse for going to war. The truth of the matter is that men go to war because they want to go to war. They can't help themselves. They are impelled by forces over which they have no control. By forces outside of themselves.
LATHAM. Those are broad, sweeping statements. Can't you be more specific?
NIEMAND. Perhaps I'd better go back to the beginning. Let me see.... It all started back in March, 1955, when I started getting patients suffering from a complex of symptoms, such as profound mental depression, anxiety, insomnia, alternating with fits of violent rage and resentment against life and the world in general. These people were deeply disturbed. No doubt about that. Yet they were not psychotic and hardly more than mildly neurotic. Now every doctor gets a good many patients of this type. Such a syndrome is characteristic of menopausal women and some men during the climacteric, but these people failed to fit into this picture. They were married and single persons of both sexes and of all ages. They came from all walks of life. The onset of their attack was invariably sudden and with scarcely any warning. They would be going about their work feeling perfectly all right. Then in a minute the whole world was like some scene from a nightmare. A week or ten days later the attack would cease as mysteriously as it had come and they would be their old self again.
LATHAM. Aren't such attacks characteristic of the stress and strain of modern life?
NIEMAND. I'm afraid that old stress-and-strain theory has been badly overworked. Been hearing about it ever since I was a pre-med student at UCLA. Even as a boy I can remember my grandfather deploring the stress and strain of modern life when he was a country doctor practicing in Indiana. In my opinion one of the most valuable contributions anthropologists have made in recent years is the discovery that primitive man is afflicted with essentially the same neurotic conditions as those of us who live a so-called civilized life. They have found savages displaying every symptom of a nervous breakdown among the mountain tribes of the Elgonyi and the Aruntas of Australia. No, Mr. Latham, it's time the stress-and-strain theory was relegated to the junk pile along with demoniac possession and blood letting.
LATHAM. You must have done something for your patients--
NIEMAND. A doctor must always do something for the patients who come to his office seeking help. First I gave them a thorough physical examination. I turned up some minor ailments--a slight heart murmur or a trace of albumin in the urine--but nothing of any significance. On the whole they were a remarkably healthy bunch of individuals, much more so than an average sample of the population. Then I made a searching inquiry into their personal life. Here again I drew a blank. They had no particular financial worries. Their sex life was generally satisfactory. There was no history of mental illness in the family. In fact, the only thing that seemed to be the matter with them was that there were times when they felt like hell.
LATHAM. I suppose you tried tranquilizers?
NIEMAND. Oh, yes. In a few cases in which I tried tranquilizing pills of the meprobamate type there was some slight improvement. I want to emphasize, however, that I do not believe in prescribing shotgun remedies for a patient. To my way of thinking it is a lazy slipshod way of carrying on the practice of medicine. The only thing for which I do give myself credit was that I asked my patients to keep a detailed record of their symptoms taking special care to note the time of exacerbation--increase in the severity of the symptoms--as accurately as possible.
LATHAM. And this gave you a clue?
NIEMAND. It was the beginning. In most instances patients reported the attack struck with almost the impact of a physical blow. The prodromal symptoms were usually slight ... a sudden feeling of uneasiness and guilt ... hot and cold flashes ... dizziness ... double vision. Then this ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him. Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern began to emerge.
* * * * *
LATHAM. What sort of pattern?
NIEMAND. The first thing that struck me was that the attacks all occurred during the daytime, between the hours of about seven in the morning and five in the evening. Then there were these coincidences--
LATHAM. Coincidences?
NIEMAND. Total strangers miles apart were stricken at almost the same moment. At first I thought nothing of it but as my records accumulated I became convinced it could not be attributed to chance. A mathematical analysis showed the number of coincidences followed a Poisson distribution very closely. I couldn't possibly see what daylight had to do with it. There is some evidence that mental patients are most disturbed around the time of full moon, but a search of medical literature failed to reveal any connection with the Sun.
LATHAM. What did you do?
NIEMAND. Naturally I said nothing of this to my patients. I did, however, take pains to impress upon them the necessity of keeping an exact record of the onset of an attack. The better records they kept the more conclusive was the evidence. Men and women were experiencing nearly simultaneous attacks of rage and depression all over southern California, which was as far as my practice extended. One day it occurred to me: if people a few miles apart could be stricken simultaneously, why not people hundreds or thousands of miles apart? It was this idea that prompted me to get in touch with an old colleague of mine I had known at UC medical school, Dr. Max Hillyard, who was in practice in Utica, New York.
LATHAM. With what result?
NIEMAND. I was afraid the result would be that my old roommate would think I had gone completely crazy. Imagine my surprise and gratification on receiving an answer by return mail to the effect that he also had been getting an increasing number of patients suffering with the same identical symptoms as my own. Furthermore, upon exchanging records we did find that in many cases patients three thousand miles apart had been stricken simultaneously--
LATHAM. Just a minute. I would like to know how you define "simultaneous."
NIEMAND. We say an attack is simultaneous when one occurred on the east coast, for example, not earlier or later than five minutes of an attack on the west coast. That is about as close as you can hope to time a subjective effect of this nature. And now another fact emerged which gave us another clue.
LATHAM. Which was?
NIEMAND. In every case of a simultaneous attack the Sun was shining at both New York and California.
LATHAM. You mean if it was cloudy--
NIEMAND. No, no. The weather had nothing to do with it. I mean the Sun had to be above the horizon at both places. A person might undergo an attack soon after sunrise in New York but there would be no corresponding record of an attack in California where it was still dark. Conversely, a person might be stricken late in the afternoon in California without a corresponding attack in New York where the Sun had set. Dr. Hillyard and I had been searching desperately for a clue. We had both noticed that the attacks occurred only during the daylight hours but this had not seemed especially significant. Here we had evidence pointing directly to the source of trouble. It must have some connection with the Sun.
LATHAM. That must have had you badly puzzled at first.
NIEMAND. It certainly did. It looked as if we were headed back to the Middle Ages when astrology and medicine went hand in hand. But since it was our only lead we had no other choice but to follow it regardless of the consequences. Here luck played somewhat of a part, for Hillyard happened to have a contact that proved invaluable to us. Several years before Hillyard had gotten to know a young astrophysicist, Henry Middletown, who had come to him suffering from a severe case of myositis in the arms and shoulders. Hillyard had been able to effect a complete cure for which the boy was very grateful, and they had kept up a desultory correspondence. Middletown was now specializing in radio astronomy at the government's new solar observatory on Turtle Back Mountain in Arizona. If it had not been for Middletown's help I'm afraid our investigation would never have gotten past the clinical stage.
LATHAM. In what way was Middletown of assistance?
NIEMAND. It was the old case of workers in one field of science being completely ignorant of what was going on in another field. Someday we will have to establish a clearing house in science instead of keeping it in tight little compartments as we do at present. Well, Hillyard and I packed up for Arizona with considerable misgivings. We were afraid Middletown wouldn't take our findings seriously but somewhat to our surprise he heard our story with the closest attention. I guess astronomers have gotten so used to hearing from flying saucer enthusiasts and science-fiction addicts that nothing surprises them any more. When we had finished he asked to see our records. Hillyard had them all set down for easy numerical tabulation. Middletown went to work with scarcely a word. Within an hour he had produced a chart that was simply astounding.
* * * * *
LATHAM. Can you describe this chart for us?
NIEMAND. It was really quite simple. But if it had not been for Middletown's experience in charting other solar phenomena it would never have occurred to us to do it. First, he laid out a series of about thirty squares horizontally across a sheet of graph paper. He dated these beginning March 1, 1955, when our records began. In each square he put a number from 1 to 10 that was a rough index of the number and intensity of the attacks reported on that day. Then he laid out another horizontal row below the first one dated twenty-seven days later. That is, the square under March 1st in the top row was dated March 28th in the row below it. He filled in the chart until he had an array of dozens of rows that included all our data down to May, 1958.
When Middletown had finished it was easy to see that the squares of highest index number did not fall at random on the chart. Instead they fell in slightly slanting parallel series so that you could draw straight lines down through them. The connection with the Sun was obvious.
LATHAM. In what way?
NIEMAND. Why, because twenty-seven days is about the synodic period of solar rotation. That is, if you see a large spot at the center of the Sun's disk today, there is a good chance if it survives that you will see it at the same place twenty-seven days later. But that night Middletown produced another chart that showed the connection with the Sun in a way that was even more convincing.
LATHAM. How was that?
NIEMAND. I said that the lines drawn down through the days of greatest mental disturbance slanted slightly. On this second chart the squares were dated under one another not at intervals of twenty-seven days, but at intervals of twenty-seven point three days.
LATHAM. Why is that so important?
NIEMAND. Because the average period of solar rotation in the sunspot zone is not twenty-seven days but twenty-seven point three days. And on this chart the lines did not slant but went vertically downward. The correlation with the synodic rotation of the Sun was practically perfect.
LATHAM. But how did you get onto the S-Regions?
NIEMAND. Middletown was immediately struck by the resemblance between the chart of mental disturbance and one he had been plotting over the years from his radio observations. Now when he compared the two charts the resemblance between the two was unmistakable. The pattern shown by the chart of mental disturbance corresponded in a striking way with the solar chart but with this difference. The disturbances on the Earth started two days later on the average than the disturbances due to the S-Regions on the Sun. In other words, there was a lag of about forty-eight hours between the two. But otherwise they were almost identical.
LATHAM. But if these S-Regions of Middletown's are invisible how could he detect them?
NIEMAND. The S-Regions are invisible to the eye through an optical telescope, but are detected with ease by a radio telescope. Middletown had discovered them when he was a graduate student working on radio astronomy in Australia, and he had followed up his researches with the more powerful equipment at Turtle Back Mountain. The formation of an S-Region is heralded by a long series of bursts of a few seconds duration, when the radiation may increase up to several thousand times that of the background intensity. These noise storms have been recorded simultaneously on wavelengths of from one to fifteen meters, which so far is the upper limit of the observations. In a few instances, however, intense bursts have also been detected down to fifty cm.
LATHAM. I believe you said the periods of mental disturbance last for about ten or twelve days. How does that tie-in with the S-Regions?
NIEMAND. Very closely. You see it takes about twelve days for an S-Region to pass across the face of the Sun, since the synodic rotation is twenty-seven point three days.
LATHAM. I should think it would be nearer thirteen or fourteen days.
NIEMAND. Apparently an S-Region is not particularly effective when it is just coming on or just going off the disk of the Sun.
LATHAM. Are the S-Regions associated with sunspots?
NIEMAND. They are connected in this way: that sunspot activity and S-Region activity certainly go together. The more sunspots the more violent and intense is the S-Region activity. But there is not a one-to-one correspondence between sunspots and S-Regions. That is, you cannot connect a particular sunspot group with a particular S-Region. The same thing is true of sunspots and magnetic storms.
LATHAM. How do you account for this?
NIEMAND. We don't account for it.
* * * * *
LATHAM. What other properties of the S-Regions have you discovered?
NIEMAND. Middletown says that the radio waves emanating from them are strongly circularly polarized. Moreover, the sense of rotation remains constant while one is passing across the Sun. If the magnetic field associated with an S-Region extends into the high solar corona through which the rays pass, then the sense of rotation corresponds to the ordinary ray of the magneto-ionic theory.
LATHAM. Does this mean that the mental disturbances arise from some form of electromagnetic radiation?
NIEMAND. We doubt it. As I said before, the charts show a lag of about forty-eight hours between the development of an S-Region and the onset of mental disturbance. This indicates that the malignant energy emanating from an S-Region consists of some highly penetrating form of corpuscular radiation, as yet unidentified.[A]
[Footnote A: Middletown believes that the Intense radiation recently discovered from information derived from Explorer I and III has no connection with the corpuscular S-radiation.]
LATHAM. A question that puzzles me is why some people are affected by the S-Regions while others are not.
NIEMAND. Our latest results indicate that probably no one is completely immune. All are affected in some degree. Just why some should be affected so much more than others is still a matter of speculation.
LATHAM. How long does an S-Region last?
NIEMAND. An S-Region may have a lifetime of from three to perhaps a dozen solar rotations. Then it dies out and for a time we are free from this malignant radiation. Then a new region develops in perhaps an entirely different region of the Sun. Sometimes there may be several different S-Regions all going at once.
LATHAM. Why were not the S-Regions discovered long ago?
NIEMAND. Because the radio exploration of the Sun only began since the end of World War II.
LATHAM. How does it happen that you only got patients suffering from S-radiation since about 1955?
NIEMAND. I think we did get such patients previously but not in large enough numbers to attract attention. Also the present sunspot cycle started its rise to maximum about 1954.
LATHAM. Is there no way of escaping the S-radiation?
NIEMAND. I'm afraid the only sure way is to keep on the unilluminated side of the Earth which is rather difficult to do. Apparently the corpuscular beam from an S-Region is several degrees wide and not very sharply defined, since its effects are felt simultaneously over the entire continent. Hillyard and Middletown are working on some form of shielding device but so far without success.
LATHAM. What is the present state of S-Region activity?
NIEMAND. At the present moment there happens to be no S-Region activity on the Sun. But a new one may develop at any time. Also, the outlook for a decrease in activity is not very favorable. Sunspot activity continues at a high level and is steadily mounting in violence. The last sunspot cycle had the highest maximum of any since 1780, but the present cycle bids fair to set an all time record.
LATHAM. And so you believe that the S-Regions are the cause of most of the present trouble in the world. That it is not ourselves but something outside ourselves--
NIEMAND. That is the logical outcome of our investigation. We are controlled and swayed by forces which in many cases we are powerless to resist.
LATHAM. Could we not be warned of the presence of an S-Region?
NIEMAND. The trouble is they seem to develop at random on the Sun. I'm afraid any warning system would be worse than useless. We would be crying WOLF! all the time.
LATHAM. How may a person who is not particularly susceptible to this malignant radiation know that one of these regions is active?
NIEMAND. If you have a feeling of restlessness and anxiety, if you are unable to concentrate, if you feel suddenly depressed and discouraged about yourself, or are filled with resentment toward the world, then you may be pretty sure that an S-Region is passing across the face of the Sun. Keep a tight rein on yourself. For it seems that evil will always be with us ... as long as the Sun shall continue to shine upon this little world.
THE END
THE YILLIAN WAY
By KEITH LAUMER
The ceremonious protocol of the Yills was impressive, colorful--and, in the long run, deadly!
I
Jame Retief, vice-consul and third secretary in the Diplomatic Corps, followed the senior members of the terrestrial mission across the tarmac and into the gloom of the reception building. The gray-skinned Yill guide who had met the arriving embassy at the foot of the ramp hurried away. The councillor, two first secretaries and the senior attaches gathered around the ambassador, their ornate uniforms bright in the vast dun-colored room.
Ten minutes passed. Retief strolled across to the nearest door and looked through the glass panel at the room beyond. Several dozen Yill lounged in deep couches, sipping lavender drinks from slender glass tubes. Black-tunicked servants moved about inconspicuously, offering trays. A party of brightly-dressed Yill moved toward the entrance doors. One of the party, a tall male, made to step before another, who raised a hand languidly, fist clenched. The first Yill stepped back and placed his hands on top of his head. Both Yill were smiling and chatting as they passed through the doors.
Retief turned away to rejoin the Terrestrial delegation waiting beside a mound of crates made of rough greenish wood stacked on the bare concrete floor.
As Retief came up, Ambassador Spradley glanced at his finger watch and spoke to the man beside him.
"Ben, are you quite certain our arrival time was made clear?"
Second Secretary Magnan nodded emphatically. "I stressed the point, Mr. Ambassador. I communicated with Mr. T'Cai-Cai just before the lighter broke orbit, and I specifically----"
"I hope you didn't appear truculent, Mr. Magnan," the ambassador said sharply.
"No indeed, Mr. Ambassador. I merely----"
"You're sure there's no VIP room here?" The ambassador glanced around the cavernous room. "Curious that not even chairs have been provided."
"If you'd care to sit on one of these crates----"
"Certainly not." The ambassador looked at his watch again and cleared his throat.
"I may as well make use of these few moments to outline our approach for the more junior members of the staff; it's vital that the entire mission work in harmony in the presentation of the image. We Terrestrials are a kindly, peace-loving race." The ambassador smiled in a kindly, peace-loving way.
"We seek only a reasonable division of spheres of influence with the Yill." He spread his hands, looking reasonable.
"We are a people of high culture, ethical, sincere." The smile was replaced abruptly by pursed lips.
"We'll start by asking for the entire Sirenian System, and settle for half. We'll establish a foothold on all the choicer worlds. And, with shrewd handling, in a century we'll be in a position to assert a wider claim."
The ambassador glanced around. "If there are no questions----"
* * * * *
Retief stepped forward. "It's my understanding, Mr. Ambassador, that we hold the prior claim to the Sirenian System. Did I understand your Excellency to say that we're ready to concede half of it to the Yill without a struggle?"
Ambassador Spradley looked up at Retief, blinking. The younger man loomed over him. Beside him, Magnan cleared his throat in the silence.
"Vice-Consul Retief merely means----"
"I can interpret Mr. Retief's remark," the ambassador snapped. He assumed a fatherly expression.
"Young man, you're new to the Service. You haven't yet learned the team play, the give-and-take of diplomacy. I shall expect you to observe closely the work of the experienced negotiators of the mission. You must learn the importance of subtlety."
"Mr. Ambassador," Magnan said, "I think the reception committee is arriving." He pointed. Half a dozen tall, short-necked Yill were entering through a side door. The leading Yill hesitated as another stepped in his path. He raised a fist, and the other moved aside, touching the top of his head perfunctorily with both hands. The group started across the room toward the Terrestrials. Retief watched as a slender alien came forward and spoke passable Terran in a reedy voice.
"I am P'Toi. Come this way...." He turned, and the group moved toward the door, the ambassador leading. As he reached for the door, the interpreter darted ahead and shouldered him aside. The other Yill stopped, waiting.
The ambassador almost glared, then remembered the image. He smiled and beckoned the Yill ahead. They milled uncertainly, muttering in the native tongue, then passed through the door.
The Terran party followed.
"---- give a great deal to know what they're saying," Retief overheard as he came up.
"Our interpreter has forged to the van," the ambassador said. "I can only assume he'll appear when needed."
"A pity we have to rely on a native interpreter," someone said.
"Had I known we'd meet this rather uncouth reception," the ambassador said stiffly, "I would have audited the language personally, of course, during the voyage out."
"Oh, no criticism intended, of course, Mr. Ambassador."
"Heavens," Magnan put in. "Who would have thought----"
Retief moved up behind the ambassador.
"Mr. Ambassador," he said, "I----"
"Later, young man," the ambassador snapped. He beckoned to the first councillor, and the two moved off, heads together.
Outside, a bluish sun gleamed in a dark sky. Retief watched his breath form a frosty cloud in the chill air. A broad doughnut-wheeled vehicle was drawn up to the platform. The Yill gestured the Terran party to the gaping door at the rear, then stood back, waiting.
Retief looked curiously at the gray-painted van. The legend written on its side in alien symbols seemed to read "egg nog."
* * * * *
The ambassador entered the vehicle, the other Terrestrials following. It was as bare of seats as the Terminal building. What appeared to be a defunct electronic chassis lay in the center of the floor.
Retief glanced back. The Yill were talking excitedly. None of them entered the car. The door was closed, and the Terrans braced themselves under the low roof as the engine started up with a whine of worn turbos.
The van moved off.
It was an uncomfortable ride. Retief put out an arm as the vehicle rounded a corner, just catching the ambassador as he staggered, off-balance. The ambassador glared at him, settled his heavy tri-corner hat and stood stiffly until the car lurched again.
Retief stooped, attempting to see out through the single dusty window. They seemed to be in a wide street lined with low buildings.
They passed through a massive gate, up a ramp, and stopped. The door opened. Retief looked out at a blank gray facade, broken by tiny windows at irregular intervals. A scarlet vehicle was drawn up ahead, the Yill reception committee emerging from it. Through its wide windows Retief saw rich upholstery and caught a glimpse of glasses clamped to a tiny bar.
P'Toi, the Yill interpreter, came forward, gestured to a small door. Magnan opened it, waiting for the ambassador.
As he stepped to it, a Yill thrust himself ahead and hesitated. Ambassador Spradley drew himself up, glaring. Then he twisted his mouth into a frozen smile and stepped aside.
The Yill looked at each other then filed through the door.
Retief was the last to enter. As he stepped inside, a black-clad servant slipped past him, pulled the lid from a large box by the door and dropped in a paper tray heaped with refuse. There were alien symbols in flaking paint on the box. They seemed, Retief noticed, to spell "egg nog."
II
The shrill pipes and whining reeds had been warming up for an hour when Retief emerged from his cubicle and descended the stairs to the banquet hall.
Standing by the open doors, he lit a slender cigar and watched through narrowed eyes as obsequious servants in black flitted along the low wide corridor, carrying laden trays into the broad room, arranging settings on a great four-sided table forming a hollow square that almost filled the room. Rich brocades were spread across the center of the side nearest the door, flanked by heavily decorated white cloths. Beyond, plain white extended to the far side, where metal dishes were arranged on the bare table top.
A richly dressed Yill approached, stepped aside to allow a servant to pass and entered the room.
Retief turned at the sound of Terran voices behind him. The ambassador came up, trailed by two diplomats. He glanced at Retief, adjusted his ruff and looked into the banquet hall.
"Apparently we're to be kept waiting again," he muttered. "After having been informed at the outset that the Yill have no intention of yielding an inch, one almost wonders...."
"Mr. Ambassador," Retief said. "Have you noticed----"
"However," Ambassador Spradley said, eyeing Retief, "a seasoned diplomatist must take these little snubs in stride. In the end---- Ah, there, Magnan." He turned away, talking.
Somewhere a gong clanged.
In a moment, the corridor was filled with chattering Yill who moved past the group of Terrestrials into the banquet hall. P'Toi, the Yill interpreter, came up and raised a hand.
"Waitt heere...."
More Yill filed into the dining room to take their places. A pair of helmeted guards approached, waving the Terrestrials back. An immense gray-jowled Yill waddled to the doors and passed through, followed by more guards.
"The Chief of State," Retief heard Magnan say. "The Admirable F'Kau-Kau-Kau."
"I have yet to present my credentials," Ambassador Spradley said. "One expects some latitude in the observances of protocol, but I confess...." He wagged his head.
The Yill interpreter spoke up.
"You now whill lhie on yourr intesstinss, and creep to fesstive board there." He pointed across the room.
"Intestines?" Ambassador Spradley looked about wildly.
"Mr. P'Toi means our stomachs, I wouldn't wonder," Magnan said. "He just wants us to lie down and crawl to our seats, Mr. Ambassador."
"What the devil are you grinning at, you idiot?" the ambassador snapped.
* * * * *
Magnan's face fell.
Spradley glanced down at the medals across his paunch.
"This is.... I've never...."
"Homage to godss," the interpreter said.
"Oh. Oh, religion," someone said.
"Well, if it's a matter of religious beliefs...." The ambassador looked dubiously around.
"Golly, it's only a couple of hundred feet," Magnan offered.
Retief stepped up to P'Toi.
"His Excellency the Terrestrial Ambassador will not crawl," he said clearly.
"Here, young man! I said nothing----"
"Not to crawl?" The interpreter wore an unreadable Yill expression.
"It is against our religion," Retief said.
"Againsst?"
"We are votaries of the Snake Goddess," Retief said. "It is a sacrilege to crawl." He brushed past the interpreter and marched toward the distant table.
The others followed.
Puffing, the ambassador came to Retief's side as they approached the dozen empty stools on the far side of the square opposite the brocaded position of the Admirable F'Kau-Kau-Kau.
"Mr. Retief, kindly see me after this affair," he hissed. "In the meantime, I hope you will restrain any further rash impulses. Let me remind you I am chief of mission here."
Magnan came up from behind.
"Let me add my congratulations, Retief," he said. "That was fast thinking----"
"Are you out of your mind, Magnan?" the ambassador barked. "I am extremely displeased!"
"Why," Magnan stuttered, "I was speaking sarcastically, of course, Mr. Ambassador. Didn't you notice the kind of shocked little gasp I gave when he did it?"
The Terrestrials took their places, Retief at the end. The table before them was of bare green wood, with an array of shallow pewter dishes.
Some of the Yill at the table were in plain gray, others in black. All eyed them silently. There was a constant stir among them as one or another rose and disappeared and others sat down. The pipes and reeds were shrilling furiously, and the susurration of Yillian conversation from the other tables rose ever higher in competition.
A tall Yill in black was at the ambassador's side now. The nearby Yill fell silent as he began ladling a whitish soup into the largest of the bowls before the Terrestrial envoy. The interpreter hovered, watching.
"That's quite enough," Ambassador Spradley said, as the bowl overflowed. The Yill servant rolled his eyes, dribbled more of the soup into the bowl.
"Kindly serve the other members of my staff," the ambassador said. The interpreter said something in a low voice. The servant moved hesitantly to the next stool and ladled more soup.
* * * * *
Retief watched, listening to the whispers around him. The Yill at the table were craning now to watch. The soup ladler was ladling rapidly, rolling his eyes sideways. He came to Retief, reached out with the full ladle for the bowl.
"No," Retief said.
The ladler hesitated.
"None for me," Retief said.
The interpreter came up and motioned to the servant, who reached again, ladle brimming.
"I ... DON'T ... LIKE ... IT!" Retief said, his voice distinct in the sudden hush. He stared at the interpreter, who stared back, then waved the servant away.
"Mr. Retief!" a voice hissed.
Retief looked down at the table. The ambassador was leaning forward, glaring at him, his face a mottled crimson.
"I'm warning you, Mr. Retief," he said hoarsely. "I've eaten sheep's eyes in the Sudan, ka swe in Burma, hundred-year cug on Mars and everything else that has been placed before me in the course of my diplomatic career. And, by the holy relics of Saint Ignatz, you'll do the same!" He snatched up a spoon-like utensil and dipped it into his bowl.
"Don't eat that, Mr. Ambassador," Retief said.
The ambassador stared, eyes wide. He opened his mouth, guided the spoon toward it----
Retief stood, gripped the table under its edge and heaved. The immense wooden slab rose and tilted, dishes sliding. It crashed to the floor with a ponderous slam.
Whitish soup splattered across the terrazzo. A couple of odd bowls rolled across the room. Cries rang out from the Yill, mingling with a strangled yell from Ambassador Spradley.
Retief walked past the wild-eyed members of the mission to the sputtering chief. "Mr. Ambassador," he said. "I'd like----"
"You'd like! I'll break you, you young hoodlum! Do you realize----"
"Pleass...." The interpreter stood at Retief's side.
"My apologies," Ambassador Spradley said, mopping his forehead. "My profound apologies."
"Be quiet," Retief said.
"Wha--what?"
"Don't apologize," Retief said. P'Toi was beckoning.
"Pleasse, arll come."
Retief turned and followed him.
The portion of the table they were ushered to was covered with an embroidered white cloth, set with thin porcelain dishes. The Yill already seated there rose, amid babbling, and moved down the table. The black-clad Yill at the end table closed ranks to fill the vacant seats. Retief sat down and found Magnan at his side.
"What's going on here?" the second secretary said angrily.
"They were giving us dog food," Retief said. "I overheard a Yill. They seated us at the bottom of the servants' table----"
"You mean you know their language?"
"I learned it on the way out. Enough, at least."
The music burst out with a clangorous fanfare, and a throng of jugglers, dancers and acrobats poured into the center of the hollow square, frantically juggling, dancing and back-flipping. Black-clad servants swarmed suddenly, heaping mounds of fragrant food on the plates of Yill and Terrestrials alike, pouring a pale purple liquor into slender glasses. Retief sampled the Yill food. It was delicious.
Conversation was impossible in the din. He watched the gaudy display and ate heartily.
III
Retief leaned back, grateful for the lull in the music. The last of the dishes were whisked away, and more glasses filled. The exhausted entertainers stopped to pick up the thick square coins the diners threw.
Retief sighed. It had been a rare feast.
"Retief," Magnan said in the comparative quiet, "what were you saying about dog food as the music came up?"
Retief looked at him. "Haven't you noticed the pattern, Mr. Magnan? The series of deliberate affronts?"
"Deliberate affronts! Just a minute, Retief. They're uncouth, yes, crowding into doorways and that sort of thing...." He looked at Retief uncertainly.
"They herded us into a baggage warehouse at the terminal. Then they hauled us here in a garbage truck----"
"Garbage truck!"
"Only symbolic, of course. They ushered us in the tradesman's entrance, and assigned us cubicles in the servants' wing. Then we were seated with the coolie class sweepers at the bottom of the table."
"You must be.... I mean, we're the Terrestrial delegation! Surely these Yill must realize our power."
"Precisely, Mr. Magnan. But----"
With a clang of cymbals the musicians launched a renewed assault. Six tall, helmeted Yill sprang into the center of the floor and paired off in a wild performance, half dance, half combat. Magnan pulled at Retief's arm, his mouth moving.
Retief shook his head. No one could talk against a Yill orchestra in full cry. He sampled a bright red wine and watched the show.
There was a flurry of action, and two of the dancers stumbled and collapsed, their partner-opponents whirling away to pair off again, describe the elaborate pre-combat ritual, and abruptly set to, dulled sabres clashing--and two more Yill were down, stunned. It was a violent dance.
Retief watched, the drink forgotten.
The last two Yill approached and retreated, whirled, bobbed and spun, feinted and postured--and on the instant, clashed, straining chest-to-chest--then broke apart, heavy weapons chopping, parrying, as the music mounted to a frenzy.
Evenly matched, the two hacked, thrust, blow for blow, across the floor, then back, defense forgotten, slugging it out.
And then one was slipping, going down, helmet awry. The other, a giant, muscular Yill, spun away, whirled in a mad skirl of pipes as coins showered--then froze before a gaudy table, raised the sabre and slammed it down in a resounding blow across the gay cloth before a lace and bow-bedecked Yill in the same instant that the music stopped.
In utter silence the dancer-fighter stared across the table at the seated Yill.
With a shout, the Yill leaped up, raised a clenched fist. The dancer bowed his head, spread his hands on his helmet.
Retief took a deep gulp of a pale yellow liqueur and leaned forward to watch. The beribboned Yill waved a hand negligently, spilled a handful of coins across the table and sat down.
The challenger spun away in a screeching shrill of music. Retief caught his eye for an instant as he passed.
And then the dancer stood rigid before the brocaded table--and the music stopped off short as the sabre slammed down before a heavy Yill in ornate metallic coils. The challenged Yill rose and raised a fist. The other ducked his head, put his hands on his helmet. Coins rolled. The dancer moved on.
Twice more the dancer struck the table in ritualistic challenge, exchanged gestures, bent his neck and passed on. He circled the broad floor, sabre twirling, arms darting in an intricate symbolism. The orchestra blared shrilly, unmuffled now by the surf-roar of conversation. The Yill, Retief noticed suddenly, were sitting silent, watching. The dancer was closer now, and then he was before Retief, poised, towering, sabre above his head.
The music cut, and in the startling instantaneous silence, the heavy sabre whipped over and down with an explosive concussion that set dishes dancing on the table-top.
* * * * *
The Yill's eyes held on Retief's. In the silence, Magnan tittered drunkenly. Retief pushed back his stool.
"Steady, my boy," Ambassador Spradley called. Retief stood, the Yill topping his six foot three by an inch. In a motion almost too quick to follow, Retief reached for the sabre, twitched it from the Yill's grip, swung it in a whistling cut. The Yill ducked, sprang back, snatched up a sabre dropped by another dancer.
"Someone stop the madman!" Spradley howled.
Retief leaped across the table, sending fragile dishes spinning.
The other danced back, and only then did the orchestra spring to life with a screech and a mad tattoo of high-pitched drums.
Making no attempt to following the weaving pattern of the Yill bolero, Retief pressed the other, fending off vicious cuts with the blunt weapon, chopping back relentlessly. Left hand on hip, Retief matched blow for blow, driving the other back.
Abruptly, the Yill abandoned the double role. Dancing forgotten, he settled down in earnest, cutting, thrusting, parrying; and now the two stood toe to toe, sabres clashing in a lightning exchange. The Yill gave a step, two, then rallied, drove Retief back, back----
And the Yill stumbled. His sabre clattered, and Retief dropped his point as the other wavered past him and crashed to the floor.
The orchestra fell silent in a descending wail of reeds. Retief drew a deep breath and wiped his forehead.
"Come back here, you young fool!" Spradley called hoarsely.
Retief hefted the sabre, turned, eyed the brocade-draped table. He started across the floor. The Yill sat as if paralyzed.
"Retief, no!" Spradley yelped.
Retief walked directly to the Admirable F'Kau-Kau-Kau, stopped, raised the sabre.
"Not the chief of state," someone in the Terrestrial mission groaned.
Retief whipped the sabre down. The dull blade split the cloth and clove the hardwood table. There was utter silence.
The Admirable F'Kau-Kau-Kau rose, seven feet of obese gray Yill. Broad face expressionless to any Terran eyes, he raised a fist like a jewel-studded ham.
Retief stood rigid for a long moment. Then, gracefully, he inclined his head, placed his finger tips on his temples.
Behind him, there was a clatter as Ambassador Spradley collapsed. Then the Admirable F'Kau-Kau-Kau cried out and reached across the table to embrace the Terrestrial, and the orchestra went mad.
Gray hands helped Retief across the table, stools were pushed aside to make room at F'Kau-Kau-Kau's side. Retief sat, took a tall flagon of coal-black brandy pressed on him by his neighbor, clashed glasses with The Admirable and drank.
IV
Retief turned at the touch on his shoulder.
"The Ambassador wants to speak to you, Retief," Magnan said.
Retief looked across to where Ambassador Spradley sat glowering behind the plain tablecloth.
"Under the circumstances," Retief said, "you'd better ask him to come over here."
"The ambassador?" Magnan's voice cracked.
"Never mind the protocol," Retief said. "The situation is still delicate." Magnan went away.
"The feast ends," F'Kau-Kau-Kau said. "Now you and I, Retief, must straddle the Council Stool."
"I'll be honored, Admirable," Retief said. "I must inform my colleagues."
"Colleagues?" F'Kau-Kau-Kau said. "It is for chiefs to parley. Who shall speak for a king while he yet has tongue for talk?"
"The Yill way is wise," Retief said.
F'Kau-Kau-Kau emptied a squat tumbler of pink beer. "I will treat with you, Retief, as viceroy, since as you say your king is old and the space between worlds is far. But there shall be no scheming underlings privy to our dealings." He grinned a Yill grin. "Afterwards we shall carouse, Retief. The Council Stool is hard and the waiting handmaidens delectable. This makes for quick agreement."
Retief smiled. "The king is wise."
"Of course, a being prefers wenches of his own kind," F'Kau-Kau-Kau said. He belched. "The Ministry of Culture has imported several Terry--excuse me, Retief--Terrestrial joy-girls, said to be top-notch specimens. At least they have very fat watchamacallits."
"The king is most considerate," Retief said.
"Let us to it then, Retief. I may hazard a fling with one of your Terries, myself. I fancy an occasional perversion." F'Kau-Kau-Kau dug an elbow into Retief's side and bellowed with laughter.
Ambassador Spradley hurried to intercept Retief as he crossed to the door at F'Kau-Kau-Kau's side.
"Retief, kindly excuse yourself, I wish a word with you." His voice was icy. Magnan stood behind him, goggling.
"Mr. Ambassador, forgive my apparent rudeness," Retief said. "I don't have time to explain now----"
"Rudeness!" Spradley barked. "Don't have time, eh? Let me tell you----"
"Lower your voice, Mr. Ambassador," Retief said.
Spradley quivered, mouth open, speechless.
"If you'll sit down and wait quietly," Retief said, "I think----"
"You think!" Spradley spluttered.
* * * * *
"Silence!" Retief said. Spradley looked up at Retief's face. He stared for a moment into Retief's gray eyes, closed his mouth and swallowed.
"The Yill seem to have gotten the impression I'm in charge," Retief said, "We'll have to keep it up."
"But--but--" Spradley stuttered. Then he straightened. "That is the last straw," he whispered hoarsely. "I am the Terrestrial Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. Magnan has told me that we've been studiedly insulted, repeatedly, since the moment of our arrival. Kept waiting in baggage rooms, transported in refuse lorries, herded about with servants, offered swill at table. Now I and my senior staff, are left cooling our heels, without so much as an audience while this--this multiple Kau person hobnobs with--with--"
Spradley's voice broke. "I may have been a trifle hasty, Retief, in attempting to restrain you. Blaspheming the native gods and dumping the banquet table are rather extreme measures, but your resentment was perhaps partially justified. I am prepared to be lenient with you." He fixed a choleric eye on Retief.
"I am walking out of this meeting, Mr. Retief. I'll take no more of these deliberate personal----"
"That's enough," Retief snapped. "You're keeping the king waiting. Get back to your chair and sit there until I come back."
Magnan found his voice. "What are you going to do, Retief?"
"I'm going to handle the negotiation," Retief said. He handed Magnan his empty glass. "Now go sit down and work on the Image."
* * * * *
At his desk in the VIP suite aboard the orbiting Corps vessel, Ambassador Spradley pursed his lips and looked severely at Vice-Consul Retief.
"Further," he said, "you have displayed a complete lack of understanding of Corps discipline, the respect due a senior agent, even the basic courtesies. Your aggravated displays of temper, ill-timed outbursts of violence and almost incredible arrogance in the assumption of authority make your further retention as an officer-agent of the Diplomatic Corps impossible. It will therefore be my unhappy duty to recommend your immediate----"
There was a muted buzz from the communicator. The ambassador cleared his throat.
"Well?"
"A signal from Sector HQ, Mr. Ambassador," a voice said.
"Well, read it," Spradley snapped. "Skip the preliminaries."
"Congratulations on the unprecedented success of your mission. The articles of agreement transmitted by you embody a most favorable resolution of the difficult Sirenian situation, and will form the basis of continued amicable relations between the Terrestrial States and the Yill Empire. To you and your staff, full credit is due for a job well done. Signed, Deputy Assistant Secretary----"
Spradley cut off the voice impatiently.
He shuffled papers, eyed Retief sharply.
"Superficially, of course, an uninitiated observer might leap to the conclusion that the--ah--results that were produced in spite of these ... ah ... irregularities justify the latter." The Ambassador smiled a sad, wise smile. "This is far from the case," he said. "I----"
The communicator burped softly.
"Confound it!" Spradley muttered. "Yes?"
"Mr. T'Cai-Cai has arrived," the voice said. "Shall I----"
"Send him in at once." Spradley glanced at Retief. "Only a two-syllable man, but I shall attempt to correct these false impressions, make some amends...."
The two Terrestrials waited silently until the Yill Protocol chief tapped at the door.
"I hope," the ambassador said, "that you will resist the impulse to take advantage of your unusual position." He looked at the door. "Come in."
T'Cai-Cai stepped into the room, glanced at Spradley, turned to greet Retief in voluble Yill. He rounded the desk to the ambassador's chair, motioned him from it and sat down.
* * * * *
"I have a surprise for you, Retief," he said, in Terran. "I myself have made use of the teaching machine you so kindly lent us."
"That's fine. T'Cai-Cai," Retief said. "I'm sure Mr. Spradley will be interested in hearing what we have to say."
"Never mind," the Yill said. "I am here only socially." He looked around the room.
"So plainly you decorate your chamber. But it has a certain austere charm." He laughed a Yill laugh.
"Oh, you are a strange breed, you Terrestrials. You surprised us all. You know, one hears such outlandish stories. I tell you in confidence, we had expected you to be overpushes."
"Pushovers," Spradley said, tonelessly.
"Such restraint! What pleasure you gave to those of us, like myself of course, who appreciated your grasp of protocol. Such finesse! How subtly you appeared to ignore each overture, while neatly avoiding actual contamination. I can tell you, there were those who thought--poor fools--that you had no grasp of etiquette. How gratified we were, we professionals, who could appreciate your virtuosity--when you placed matters on a comfortable basis by spurning the cats'-meat. It was sheer pleasure then, waiting, to see what form your compliment would take."
The Yill offered orange cigars, stuffed one in his nostril.
"I confess even I had not hoped that you would honor our Admirable so signally. Oh, it is a pleasure to deal with fellow professionals, who understand the meaning of protocol!"
Ambassador Spradley made a choking sound.
"This fellow has caught a chill," T'Cai-Cai said. He eyed Spradley dubiously. "Step back, my man. I am highly susceptible.
"There is one bit of business I shall take pleasure in attending to, my dear Retief," T'Cai-Cai went on. He drew a large paper from his reticule. "The Admirable is determined than none other than yourself shall be accredited here. I have here my government's exequatur confirming you as Terrestrial consul-general to Yill. We shall look forward to your prompt return."
Retief looked at Spradley.
"I'm sure the Corps will agree," he said.
"Then I shall be going," T'Cai-Cai said. He stood up. "Hurry back to us, Retief. There is much that I would show you of Yill."
"I'll hurry," Retief said and, with a Yill wink: "Together we shall see many high and splendid things!"
END
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON
By Tom Leahy
She was sweet, gentle, kind--a sort of Martian Old Mother Hubbard. But when she went to her cupboard ...
The clod burst in a cloud of red sand and the little Martian sand dog ducked quickly into his burrow. Marilou threw another at the aperture in the ground and then ran over and with the inside of her foot she scraped sand into it until it was filled to the surface. She started to leave, but stopped.
The little fellow might choke to death, she thought, it wasn't his fault she had to live on Mars. Satisfied that the future of something was dependent on her whim, she dug the sand from the hole. His little yellow eyes peered out at her.
"Go on an' live," she said magnanimously.
She got up and brushed the sand from her knees and dress, and walked slowly down the red road.
The noon sun was relentless; nowhere was there relief from it. Marilou squinted and shaded her eyes with her hand. She looked in the sky for one of those infrequent Martian rain clouds, but the deep blue was only occasionally spotted by fragile white puffs. Like the sun, they had no regard for her, either. They were too concerned with moving toward the distant mountains, there to cling momentarily to the peaks and then continue on their endless route.
Marilou dabbed the moisture from her forehead with the hem of her dress. "I know one thing," she mumbled. "When I grow up, I'll get to Earth an' never come back to Mars, no matter what!"
She broke into a defiant, cadenced step.
"An' I won't care whether you an' Mommy like it or not!" she declared aloud, sticking out her chin at an imaginary father before her.
Before she realized it, a tiny, lime-washed stone house appeared not a hundred yards ahead of her. That was the odd thing about the Martian midday; something small and miles away would suddenly become large and very near as you approached it.
The heat waves did it, her father had told her. "Really?" she had replied, and--you think you know so doggone much, she had thought.
* * * * *
"Aunt Twylee!" She broke into a run. By the Joshua trees, through the stone gateway she ran, and with a leap she lit like a young frog on the porch. "Hi, Aunt Twylee!" she said breathlessly.
An ancient Martian woman sat in a rocking chair in the shade of the porch. She held a bowl of purple river apples in her lap. Her papyrus-like hands moved quickly as she shaved the skin from one. In a matter of seconds it was peeled. She looked up over her bifocals at the panting Marilou.
"Gracious, child, you shouldn't run like that this time of day," she said. "You Earth children aren't used to our Martian heat. It'll make you sick if you run too much."
"I don't care! I hate Mars! Sometimes I wish I could just get good an' sick, so's I'd get to go home!"
"Marilou, you are a little tyrant!" Aunt Twylee laughed.
"Watcha' doin', Aunt Twylee?" Marilou asked, getting up from her frog posture and coming near the old Martian lady's chair.
"Oh, peeling apples, dear. I'm going to make a cobbler this afternoon." She dropped the last apple, peeled, into the bowl. "There, done. Would you like a little cool apple juice, Marilou?"
"Sure--you betcha! Hey, could I watch you make the cobbler, Aunt Twylee, could I? Mommy can't make it for anything--it tastes like glue. Maybe, if I could see how you do it, maybe I could show her. Do you think?"
"Now, Marilou, your mother must be a wonderful cook to have raised such a healthy little girl. I'm sure there's nothing she could learn from me," Aunt Twylee said as she arose. "Let's go inside and have that apple juice."
The kitchen was dark and cool, and filled with the odors of the wonderful edibles the old Martian had created on and in the Earth-made stove. She opened the Earth-made refrigerator that stood in the corner and withdrew an Earth-made bottle filled with Martian apple juice.
Marilou jumped up on the table and sat cross-legged.
"Here, dear." Aunt Twylee handed her a glass of the icy liquid.
"Ummm, thanks," Marilou said, and gulped down half the contents. "That tastes dreamy, Aunt Twylee."
The little girl watched the old Martian as she lit the oven and gathered the necessary ingredients for the cobbler. As she bent over to get a bowl from the shelf beneath Marilou's perch, her hair brushed against the child's knee. Her hair was soft, soft and white as a puppy's, soft and white like the down from a dandelion. She smiled at Marilou. She always smiled; her pencil-thin mouth was a perpetual arc.
Marilou drained the glass. "Aunt Twylee--is it true what my daddy says about the Martians?"
"True? How can I say, dear? I don't know what he said."
"Well, I mean, that when us Earth people came, you Martians did inf ... infan ..."
"Infanticide?" Aunt Twylee interrupted, rolling the dough on the board a little flatter, a little faster.
"Yes, that's it--killed babies," Marilou said, and took an apple from the bowl. "My daddy says you were real primitive, an' killed your babies for some silly religious reason. I think that's awful! How could it be religious? God couldn't like to have little babies killed!" She took a big bite of the apple; the juice ran from the corners of her mouth.
"Your daddy is a very intelligent man, Marilou, but he's partially wrong. It is true--but not for religious reasons. It was a necessity. You must remember, dear, Mars is very arid--sterile--unable to sustain many living things. It was awful, but it was the only way we knew to control the population."
* * * * *
Marilou looked down her button nose as she picked a brown spot from the apple. "Hmmph, I'll tell 'im he's wrong," she said. "He thinks he knows so damn much!"
"Marilou!" Aunt Twylee exclaimed as she looked over her glasses. "A sweet child like you shouldn't use such language!"
Marilou giggled and popped the remaining portion of the apple in her mouth.
"Do your parents know where you are, child?" Aunt Twylee asked, as she took the bowl from Marilou's hands. She began dicing the apples into a dough-lined casserole.
"No, they don't," Marilou replied. She sprayed the air with little particles of apple as she talked. "Everybody's gone to the hills to look for the boys."
"The boys?" Aunt Twylee stopped her work and looked at the little girl.
"Yes--Jimmy an' Eddie an' some of the others disappeared from the settlement this morning. The men're afraid they've run off to th' hills an' the renegades got 'em."
"Gracious," Aunt Twylee said; her brow knitted into a criss-cross of wrinkles.
"Oh, I know those dopes. They're prob'ly down at th' canals--fishin' or somep'n."
"Just the same, your mother will be frantic, dear. You should have told her where you were going."
"I don't care," Marilou said with unadulterated honesty. "She'll be all right when I get home."
Aunt Twylee shook her head and clucked her tongue.
"Can I have another glass? Please?"
The old lady poured the glass full again. And then she sprinkled sugar down among the apple cubes in the casserole and covered them with a blanket of dough. She cut an uneven circle of half moons in it and put it in the oven. "There--all ready to bake, Marilou," she sighed.
"It looks real yummy, Aunt Twylee."
"Well, I certainly hope it turns out good, dear," she said, wiping her forehead with her apron. She looked out the open back door. The landscape was beginning to gray as heavier clouds moved down from the mountains and pressed the afternoon heat closer, more oppressively to the ground. "My, it's getting hot. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if we didn't get a little rain this afternoon, Marilou." She turned back to the little girl. "Tell me some more about your daddy, dear. We Martians certainly owe a lot to men like your father."
"That's what he says too. He says, you Martians would have died out in a few years, if we hadn't come here. We're so much more civi ... civili ..."
"Civilized?"
"Yeah. He says, we were so much more 'civ-ilized' than you that we saved your lives when we came here with all our modern stuff."
"Well, that's true enough, dear. Just look at that wonderful Earth stove," Aunt Twylee said, and laughed. "We wouldn't be able to bake an apple cobbler like that without it, would we?"
* * * * *
A rumble of thunder shouldered through the crowded hot air.
"No. He says, you Martians are kinda likeable, but you can't be trusted. He's nuts! I like you Martians!"
"Thank you, child, but everyone's entitled to his own opinion. Don't judge your daddy too severely," Aunt Twylee said as she scraped spilled sugar from the table and put little bits of it on her tongue.
"He says that you'd bite th' hand that feeds you. He says, we brought all these keen things to Mars, an' that if you got th' chance, you'd kill all of us!"
"Gracious," said Aunt Twylee as she speared scraps of dough with the point of her long paring knife.
"He's a dope!" Marilou said.
Aunt Twylee opened the oven and peeked in at the cobbler. The aroma of the simmering apples rushed out and filled the room.
"Could I have some cobbler when it's done?" Marilou asked, her mouth filling with saliva.
"I'm afraid not, child. It's getting rather late."
The thunder rumbled again--a little closer, a little louder.
The old lady washed the blade of the knife in the sink. "Tell me more of what your father says, dear," she said as she adjusted the bifocals on her thin nose and ran her thumb along the length of the knife's blade.
"Oh, nothin' much more. He just says that you'd kill us if you had th' chance. That's the way the inferior races always act, he says. They want to kill th' people that help 'em, 'cause they resent 'em."
"Very interesting."
"Well, it isn't so, is it, Aunt Twylee?"
The room was filled with blinding blue-white light, and the walls quaked at the sound of a monstrous thunderclap.
The old Martian glanced nervously at the clock on the wall. "My, it is getting late," she said as she fondled the knife in her hands.
"You Martians wouldn't do anything like that, would you?"
"You want the truth, don't you, dear?" Aunt Twylee asked, smiling, as she walked to the table where Marilou sat.
"'Course I do, Aunt Twylee," she said.
Her scream was answered and smothered by the horrendous roar of the thunder, and the piercing hiss of the rain that fell in sheets. In great volumes of water, it fell, as though the heavens were attempting to wash the sins of man from the universe and into non-existence in the void beyond the void.
* * * * *
Marilou lay beside the other children. Aunt Twylee smiled at them, closed the bedroom door and returned to the kitchen.
The storm had moved on; the thunder was the faint grumbling of a pacified old man. What water fell was a monotonous trickle from the eaves of the lime-washed stone house. Aunt Twylee washed the blood from the knife and wiped it dry on her apron. She opened the oven and took out the browned cobbler. Sweet apple juice bubbled to the surface through the half moons and burst in delights of sugary aroma. The sun broke through the thinning edge of the thunderhead.
Aunt Twylee brushed a lock of her feathery white hair from her moist cheek. "Gracious," she said, "I must tidy up a bit before the others come."
THE END
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT
BY WILLIAM LEE
Fallout is, of course, always disastrous-- one way or another
"What would you think," I asked Marjorie over supper, "if I should undertake to lead a junior achievement group this summer?"
She pondered it while she went to the kitchen to bring in the dessert. It was dried apricot pie, and very tasty, I might add.
"Why, Donald," she said, "it could be quite interesting, if I understand what a junior achievement group is. What gave you the idea?"
"It wasn't my idea, really," I admitted. "Mr. McCormack called me to the office today, and told me that some of the children in the lower grades wanted to start one. They need adult guidance of course, and one of the group suggested my name."
I should explain, perhaps, that I teach a course in general science in our Ridgeville Junior High School, and another in general physics in the Senior High School. It's a privilege which I'm sure many educators must envy, teaching in Ridgeville, for our new school is a fine one, and our academic standards are high. On the other hand, the fathers of most of my students work for the Commission and a constant awareness of the Commission and its work pervades the town. It is an uneasy privilege then, at least sometimes, to teach my old-fashioned brand of science to these children of a new age.
"That's very nice," said Marjorie. "What does a junior achievement group do?"
"It has the purpose," I told her, "of teaching the members something about commerce and industry. They manufacture simple compositions like polishing waxes and sell them from door-to-door. Some groups have built up tidy little bank accounts which are available for later educational expenses."
"Gracious, you wouldn't have to sell from door-to-door, would you?"
"Of course not. I'd just tell the kids how to do it."
Marjorie put back her head and laughed, and I was forced to join her, for we both recognize that my understanding and "feel" for commercial matters--if I may use that expression--is almost nonexistent.
"Oh, all right," I said, "laugh at my commercial aspirations. But don't worry about it, really. Mr. McCormack said we could get Mr. Wells from Commercial Department to help out if he was needed. There is one problem, though. Mr. McCormack is going to put up fifty dollars to buy any raw materials wanted and he rather suggested that I might advance another fifty. The question is, could we do it?"
Marjorie did mental arithmetic. "Yes," she said, "yes, if it's something you'd like to do."
We've had to watch such things rather closely for the last ten--no, eleven years. Back in the old Ridgeville, fifty-odd miles to the south, we had our home almost paid for, when the accident occurred. It was in the path of the heaviest fallout, and we couldn't have kept on living there even if the town had stayed. When Ridgeville moved to its present site, so, of course, did we, which meant starting mortgage payments all over again.
* * * * *
Thus it was that on a Wednesday morning about three weeks later, I was sitting at one end of a plank picnic table with five boys and girls lined up along the sides. This was to be our headquarters and factory for the summer--a roomy unused barn belonging to the parents of one of the group members, Tommy Miller.
"O.K.," I said, "let's relax. You don't need to treat me as a teacher, you know. I stopped being a school teacher when the final grades went in last Friday. I'm on vacation now. My job here is only to advise, and I'm going to do that as little as possible. You're going to decide what to do, and if it's safe and legal and possible to do with the starting capital we have, I'll go along with it and help in any way I can. This is your meeting."
Mr. McCormack had told me, and in some detail, about the youngsters I'd be dealing with. The three who were sitting to my left were the ones who had proposed the group in the first place.
Doris Enright was a grave young lady of ten years, who might, I thought, be quite a beauty in a few more years, but was at the moment rather angular--all shoulders and elbows. Peter Cope, Jr. and Hilary Matlack were skinny kids, too. The three were of an age and were all tall for ten-year-olds.
I had the impression during that first meeting that they looked rather alike, but this wasn't so. Their features were quite different. Perhaps from association, for they were close friends, they had just come to have a certain similarity of restrained gesture and of modulated voice. And they were all tanned by sun and wind to a degree that made their eyes seem light and their teeth startlingly white.
The two on my right were cast in a different mold. Mary McCready was a big husky redhead of twelve, with a face full of freckles and an infectious laugh, and Tommy Miller, a few months younger, was just an average, extroverted, well adjusted youngster, noisy and restless, tee-shirted and butch-barbered.
The group exchanged looks to see who would lead off, and Peter Cope seemed to be elected.
"Well, Mr. Henderson, a junior achievement group is a bunch of kids who get together to manufacture and sell things, and maybe make some money."
"Is that what you want to do," I asked, "make money?"
"Why not?" Tommy asked. "There's something wrong with making money?"
"Well, sure, I suppose we want to," said Hilary. "We'll need some money to do the things we want to do later."
"And what sort of things would you like to make and sell?" I asked.
The usual products, of course, with these junior achievement efforts, are chemical specialties that can be made safely and that people will buy and use without misgivings--solvent to free up rusty bolts, cleaner to remove road tar, mechanic's hand soap--that sort of thing. Mr. McCormack had told me, though, that I might find these youngsters a bit more ambitious. "The Miller boy and Mary McCready," he had said, "have exceptionally high IQ's--around one forty or one fifty. The other three are hard to classify. They have some of the attributes of exceptional pupils, but much of the time they seem to have little interest in their studies. The junior achievement idea has sparked their imaginations. Maybe it'll be just what they need."
Mary said, "Why don't we make a freckle remover? I'd be our first customer."
* * *
"The thing to do," Tommy offered, "is to figure out what people in Ridgeville want to buy, then sell it to them."
"I'd like to make something by powder metallurgy techniques," said Pete. He fixed me with a challenging eye. "You should be able to make ball bearings by molding, then densify them by electroplating."
"And all we'd need is a hydraulic press," I told him, "which, on a guess, might cost ten thousand dollars. Let's think of something easier."
Pete mulled it over and nodded reluctantly. "Then maybe something in the electronics field. A hi-fi sub-assembly of some kind."
"How about a new detergent?" Hilary put in.
"Like the liquid dishwashing detergents?" I asked.
He was scornful. "No, they're formulations--you know, mixtures. That's cookbook chemistry. I mean a brand new synthetic detergent. I've got an idea for one that ought to be good even in the hard water we've got around here."
"Well, now," I said, "organic synthesis sounds like another operation calling for capital investment. If we should keep the achievement group going for several summers, it might be possible later on to carry out a safe synthesis of some sort. You're Dr. Matlack's son, aren't you? Been dipping into your father's library?"
"Some," said Hilary, "and I've got a home laboratory."
"How about you, Doris?" I prompted. "Do you have a special field of interest?"
"No." She shook her head in mock despondency. "I'm not very technical. Just sort of miscellaneous. But if the group wanted to raise some mice, I'd be willing to turn over a project I've had going at home."
"You could sell mice?" Tommy demanded incredulously.
"Mice," I echoed, then sat back and thought about it. "Are they a pure strain? One of the recognized laboratory strains? Healthy mice of the right strain," I explained to Tommy, "might be sold to laboratories. I have an idea the Commission buys a supply every month."
"No," said Doris, "these aren't laboratory mice. They're fancy ones. I got the first four pairs from a pet shop in Denver, but they're red--sort of chipmunk color, you know. I've carried them through seventeen generations of careful selection."
"Well, now," I admitted, "the market for red mice might be rather limited. Why don't you consider making an after-shave lotion? Denatured alcohol, glycerine, water, a little color and perfume. You could buy some bottles and have some labels printed. You'd be in business before you knew it."
There was a pause, then Tommy inquired, "How do you sell it?"
"Door-to-door."
He made a face. "Never build up any volume. Unless it did something extra. You say we'd put color in it. How about enough color to leave your face looking tanned. Men won't use cosmetics and junk, but if they didn't have to admit it, they might like the shave lotion."
Hilary had been deep in thought. He said suddenly, "Gosh, I think I know how to make a--what do you want to call it--a before-shave lotion."
"What would that be?" I asked.
"You'd use it before you shaved."
"I suppose there might be people who'd prefer to use it beforehand," I conceded.
"There will be people," he said darkly, and subsided.
Mrs. Miller came out to the barn after a while, bringing a bucket of soft drinks and ice, a couple of loaves of bread and ingredients for a variety of sandwiches. The parents had agreed to underwrite lunches at the barn and Betty Miller philosophically assumed the role of commissary officer. She paused only to say hello and to ask how we were progressing with our organization meeting.
I'd forgotten all about organization, and that, according to all the articles I had perused, is most important to such groups. It's standard practice for every member of the group to be a company officer. Of course a young boy who doesn't know any better, may wind up a sales manager.
Over the sandwiches, then, I suggested nominating company officers, but they seemed not to be interested. Peter Cope waved it off by remarking that they'd each do what came naturally. On the other hand, they pondered at some length about a name for the organization, without reaching any conclusions, so we returned to the problem of what to make.
It was Mary, finally, who advanced the thought of kites. At first there was little enthusiasm, then Peter said, "You know, we could work up something new. Has anybody ever seen a kite made like a wind sock?"
Nobody had. Pete drew figures in the air with his hands. "How about the hole at the small end?"
"I'll make one tonight," said Doris, "and think about the small end. It'll work out all right."
I wished that the youngsters weren't starting out by inventing a new article to manufacture, and risking an almost certain disappointment, but to hold my guidance to the minimum, I said nothing, knowing that later I could help them redesign it along standard lines.
* * * * *
At supper I reviewed the day's happenings with Marjorie and tried to recall all of the ideas which had been propounded. Most of them were impractical, of course, for a group of children to attempt, but several of them appeared quite attractive.
Tommy, for example, wanted to put tooth powder into tablets that one would chew before brushing the teeth. He thought there should be two colors in the same bottle--orange for morning and blue for night, the blue ones designed to leave the mouth alkaline at bed time.
Pete wanted to make a combination nail and wood screw. You'd drive it in with a hammer up to the threaded part, then send it home with a few turns of a screwdriver.
Hilary, reluctantly forsaking his ideas on detergents, suggested we make black plastic discs, like poker chips but thinner and as cheap as possible, to scatter on a snowy sidewalk where they would pick up extra heat from the sun and melt the snow more rapidly. Afterward one would sweep up and collect the discs.
Doris added to this that if you could make the discs light enough to float, they might be colored white and spread on the surface of a reservoir to reduce evaporation.
These latter ideas had made unknowing use of some basic physics, and I'm afraid I relapsed for a few minutes into the role of teacher and told them a little bit about the laws of radiation and absorption of heat.
"My," said Marjorie, "they're really smart boys and girls. Tommy Miller does sound like a born salesman. Somehow I don't think you're going to have to call in Mr. Wells."
I do feel just a little embarrassed about the kite, even now. The fact that it flew surprised me. That it flew so confoundedly well was humiliating. Four of them were at the barn when I arrived next morning; or rather on the rise of ground just beyond it, and the kite hung motionless and almost out of sight in the pale sky. I stood and watched for a moment, then they saw me.
"Hello, Mr. Henderson," Mary said, and proffered the cord which was wound on a fishing reel. I played the kite up and down for a few minutes, then reeled it in. It was, almost exactly, a wind sock, but the hole at the small end was shaped--by wire--into the general form of a kidney bean. It was beautifully made, and had a sort of professional look about it.
"It flies too well," Mary told Doris. "A kite ought to get caught in a tree sometimes."
"You're right," Doris agreed. "Let's see it." She gave the wire at the small end the slightest of twists. "There, it ought to swoop."
Sure enough, in the moderate breeze of that morning, the kite swooped and yawed to Mary's entire satisfaction. As we trailed back to the barn I asked Doris, "How did you know that flattening the lower edge of the hole would create instability?" She looked doubtful.
"Why it would have to, wouldn't it? It changed the pattern of air pressures." She glanced at me quickly. "Of course, I tried a lot of different shapes while I was making it."
"Naturally," I said, and let it go at that. "Where's Tommy?"
"He stopped off at the bank," Pete Cope told me, "to borrow some money. We'll want to buy materials to make some of these kites."
"But I said yesterday that Mr. McCormack and I were going to advance some cash to get started."
"Oh, sure, but don't you think it would be better to borrow from a bank? More businesslike?"
"Doubtless," I said, "but banks generally want some security." I would have gone on and explained matters further, except that Tommy walked in and handed me a pocket check book.
"I got two hundred and fifty," he volunteered--not without a hint of complacency in his voice. "It didn't take long, but they sure made it out a big deal. Half the guys in the bank had to be called in to listen to the proposition. The account's in your name, Mr. Henderson, and you'll have to make out the checks. And they want you to stop in at the bank and give them a specimen signature. Oh, yes, and cosign the note."
My heart sank. I'd never had any dealings with banks except in the matter of mortgages, and bank people make me most uneasy. To say nothing of finding myself responsible for a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar note--over two weeks salary. I made a mental vow to sign very few checks.
"So then I stopped by at Apex Stationers," Tommy went on, "and ordered some paper and envelopes. We hadn't picked a name yesterday, but I figured what's to lose, and picked one. Ridge Industries, how's that?" Everybody nodded.
"Just three lines on the letterhead," he explained. "Ridge Industries--Ridgeville--Montana."
I got my voice back and said, "Engraved, I trust."
"Well, sure," he replied. "You can't afford to look chintzy."
* * *
My appetite was not at its best that evening, and Marjorie recognized that something was concerning me, but she asked no questions, and I only told her about the success of the kite, and the youngsters embarking on a shopping trip for paper, glue and wood splints. There was no use in both of us worrying.
On Friday we all got down to work, and presently had a regular production line under way; stapling the wood splints, then wetting them with a resin solution and shaping them over a mandrel to stiffen, cutting the plastic film around a pattern, assembling and hanging the finished kites from an overhead beam until the cement had set. Pete Cope had located a big roll of red plastic film from somewhere, and it made a wonderful-looking kite. Happily, I didn't know what the film cost until the first kites were sold.
By Wednesday of the following week we had almost three hundred kites finished and packed into flat cardboard boxes, and frankly I didn't care if I never saw another. Tommy, who by mutual consent, was our authority on sales, didn't want to sell any until we had, as he put it, enough to meet the demand, but this quantity seemed to satisfy him. He said he would sell them the next week and Mary McCready, with a fine burst of confidence, asked him in all seriousness to be sure to hold out a dozen.
Three other things occurred that day, two of which I knew about immediately. Mary brought a portable typewriter from home and spent part of the afternoon banging away at what seemed to me, since I use two fingers only, a very creditable speed.
And Hilary brought in a bottle of his new detergent. It was a syrupy yellow liquid with a nice collar of suds. He'd been busy in his home laboratory after all, it seemed.
"What is it?" I asked. "You never told us."
Hilary grinned. "Lauryl benzyl phosphonic acid, dipotassium salt, in 20% solution."
"Goodness." I protested, "it's been twenty-five years since my last course in chemistry. Perhaps if I saw the formula--."
He gave me a singularly adult smile and jotted down a scrawl of symbols and lines. It meant little to me.
"Is it good?"
For answer he seized the ice bucket, now empty of its soda bottles, trickled in a few drops from the bottle and swished the contents. Foam mounted to the rim and spilled over. "And that's our best grade of Ridgeville water," he pointed out. "Hardest in the country."
The third event of Wednesday came to my ears on Thursday morning.
I was a little late arriving at the barn, and was taken a bit aback to find the roadway leading to it rather full of parked automobiles, and the barn itself rather full of people, including two policemen. Our Ridgeville police are quite young men, but in uniform they still look ominous and I was relieved to see that they were laughing and evidently enjoying themselves.
"Well, now," I demanded, in my best classroom voice. "What is all this?"
"Are you Henderson?" the larger policeman asked.
"I am indeed," I said, and a flash bulb went off. A young lady grasped my arm.
"Oh, please, Mr. Henderson, come outside where it's quieter and tell me all about it."
"Perhaps," I countered, "somebody should tell me."
"You mean you don't know, honestly? Oh, it's fabulous. Best story I've had for ages. It'll make the city papers." She led me around the corner of the barn to a spot of comparative quiet.
"You didn't know that one of your junior whatsisnames poured detergent in the Memorial Fountain basin last night?"
I shook my head numbly.
"It was priceless. Just before rush hour. Suds built up in the basin and overflowed, and down the library steps and covered the whole street. And the funniest part was they kept right on coming. You couldn't imagine so much suds coming from that little pool of water. There was a three-block traffic jam and Harry got us some marvelous pictures--men rolling up their trousers to wade across the street. And this morning," she chortled, "somebody phoned in an anonymous tip to the police--of course it was the same boy that did it--Tommy--Miller?--and so here we are. And we just saw a demonstration of that fabulous kite and saw all those simply captivating mice."
"Mice?"
"Yes, of course. Who would ever have thought you could breed mice with those cute furry tails?"
* * *
Well, after a while things quieted down. They had to. The police left after sobering up long enough to give me a serious warning against letting such a thing happen again. Mr. Miller, who had come home to see what all the excitement was, went back to work and Mrs. Miller went back to the house and the reporter and photographer drifted off to file their story, or whatever it is they do. Tommy was jubilant.
"Did you hear what she said? It'll make the city papers. I wish we had a thousand kites. Ten thousand. Oh boy, selling is fun. Hilary, when can you make some more of that stuff? And Doris, how many mice do you have?"
Those mice! I have always kept my enthusiasm for rodents within bounds, but I must admit they were charming little beasts, with tails as bushy as miniature squirrels.
"How many generations?" I asked Doris.
"Seventeen. No, eighteen, now. Want to see the genetic charts?"
I won't try to explain it as she did to me, but it was quite evident that the new mice were breeding true. Presently we asked Betty Miller to come back down to the barn for a conference. She listened and asked questions. At last she said, "Well, all right, if you promise me they can't get out of their cages. But heaven knows what you'll do when fall comes. They won't live in an unheated barn and you can't bring them into the house."
"We'll be out of the mouse business by then," Doris predicted. "Every pet shop in the country will have them and they'll be down to nothing apiece."
Doris was right, of course, in spite of our efforts to protect the market. Anyhow that ushered in our cage building phase, and for the next week--with a few interruptions--we built cages, hundreds of them, a good many for breeding, but mostly for shipping.
It was rather regrettable that, after the Courier gave us most of the third page, including photographs, we rarely had a day without a few visitors. Many of them wanted to buy mice or kites, but Tommy refused to sell any mice at retail and we soon had to disappoint those who wanted kites. The Supermarket took all we had--except a dozen--and at a dollar fifty each. Tommy's ideas of pricing rather frightened me, but he set the value of the mice at ten dollars a pair and got it without any arguments.
Our beautiful stationery arrived, and we had some invoice forms printed up in a hurry--not engraved, for a wonder.
It was on Tuesday--following the Thursday--that a lanky young man disentangled himself from his car and strolled into the barn. I looked up from the floor where I was tacking squares of screening onto wooden frames.
"Hi," he said. "You're Donald Henderson, right? My name is McCord--Jeff McCord--and I work in the Patent Section at the Commission's downtown office. My boss sent me over here, but if he hadn't, I think I'd have come anyway. What are you doing to get patent protection on Ridge Industries' new developments?"
I got my back unkinked and dusted off my knees. "Well, now," I said, "I've been wondering whether something shouldn't be done, but I know very little about such matters--."
"Exactly," he broke in, "we guessed that might be the case, and there are three patent men in our office who'd like to chip in and contribute some time. Partly for the kicks and partly because we think you may have some things worth protecting. How about it? You worry about the filing and final fees. That's sixty bucks per brainstorm. We'll worry about everything else."
"What's to lose," Tommy interjected.
And so we acquired a patent attorney, several of them, in fact.
The day that our application on the kite design went to Washington, Mary wrote a dozen toy manufacturers scattered from New York to Los Angeles, sent a kite to each one and offered to license the design. Result, one licensee with a thousand dollar advance against next season's royalties.
* * * * *
It was a rainy morning about three weeks later that I arrived at the barn. Jeff McCord was there, and the whole team except Tommy. Jeff lowered his feet from the picnic table and said, "Hi."
"Hi yourself," I told him. "You look pleased."
"I am," he replied, "in a cautious legal sense, of course. Hilary and I were just going over the situation on his phosphonate detergent. I've spent the last three nights studying the patent literature and a few standard texts touching on phosphonates. There are a zillion patents on synthetic detergents and a good round fifty on phosphonates, but it looks"--he held up a long admonitory hand--"it just looks as though we had a clear spot. If we do get protection, you've got a real salable property."
"That's fine, Mr. McCord," Hilary said, "but it's not very important."
"No?" Jeff tilted an inquiring eyebrow at me, and I handed him a small bottle. He opened and sniffed at it gingerly. "What gives?"
"Before-shave lotion," Hilary told him. "You've shaved this morning, but try some anyway."
Jeff looked momentarily dubious, then puddled some in his palm and moistened his jaw line. "Smells good," he noted, "and feels nice and cool. Now what?"
"Wipe your face." Jeff located a handkerchief and wiped, looked at the cloth, wiped again, and stared.
"What is it?"
"A whisker stiffener. It makes each hair brittle enough to break off right at the surface of your skin."
"So I perceive. What is it?"
"Oh, just a mixture of stuff. Cookbook chemistry. Cysteine thiolactone and a fat-soluble magnesium compound."
"I see. Just a mixture of stuff. And do your whiskers grow back the next day?"
"Right on schedule," I said.
McCord unfolded his length and stood staring out into the rain. Presently he said, "Henderson, Hilary and I are heading for my office. We can work there better than here, and if we're going to break the hearts of the razor industry, there's no better time to start than now."
When they had driven off I turned and said, "Let's talk a while. We can always clean mouse cages later. Where's Tommy?"
"Oh, he stopped at the bank to get a loan."
"What on earth for? We have over six thousand in the account."
"Well," Peter said, looking a little embarrassed, "we were planning to buy a hydraulic press. You see, Doris put some embroidery on that scheme of mine for making ball bearings." He grabbed a sheet of paper. "Look, we make a roller bearing, this shape only it's a permanent magnet. Then you see--." And he was off.
"What did they do today, dear?" Marge asked as she refilled my coffee cup.
"Thanks," I said. "Let's see, it was a big day. We picked out a hydraulic press, Doris read us the first chapter of the book she's starting, and we found a place over a garage on Fourth Street that we can rent for winter quarters. Oh, yes, and Jeff is starting action to get the company incorporated."
"Winter quarters," Marge repeated. "You mean you're going to try to keep the group going after school starts?"
"Why not? The kids can sail through their courses without thinking about them, and actually they won't put in more than a few hours a week during the school year."
"Even so, it's child labor, isn't it?"
"Child labor nothing. They're the employers. Jeff McCord and I will be the only employees--just at first, anyway."
Marge choked on something. "Did you say you'd be an employee?"
"Sure," I told her. "They've offered me a small share of the company, and I'd be crazy to turn it down. After all, what's to lose?"
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE
By Richard O. Lewis
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
Herbert Hyrel settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
* * * * *
He let the thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him--his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name--streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
* * * * *
The dank air of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses--monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor--had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter--hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment--came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
* * * * *
He looked at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before--a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self--and complete consciousness--back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds. "Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
* * * * *
She sipped her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes. "No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's--let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey!" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms--if you can't afford to show me a good time--if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said. "We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
* * * * *
She had gone coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
* * * * *
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM
By Herbert Livingston
Deep in space lay a weird and threatening world. And it was there that Ben Sessions found the evil daughters . . .
Beyond Ventura B there was no life; there was nothing but one worn out sun after another, each with its retinue of cold planets and its trail of dark asteroids. At least that was what the books showed, and the books had been written by men who knew their business. Yet, despite the books and the men who had written them, Ben Sessions went past Ventura B, deliberately and all alone and knowing that the odds were against his returning alive.
He went because of a file clerk's error. More correctly, he went as the final result of a chain of events which had begun with the clerk's mistake.
The clerk's name was Gilbert Wayne and he worked at the Las Vegas Interplanetary Port. It was Wayne's job to put through the orders for routine overhaul of interplanetary rockets. Usually Wayne was quite efficient, but even efficient men have bad days, and on one of those days Wayne had removed from the active list the name of Astra instead of its sister ship, the Storan.
The very next morning the Astra had been turned over to Maintenance. Maintenance asked no questions. It was that department's job to take the ship apart, fix what needed fixing, and put it. Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando Gomez was the mechanic detailed to check the rocket tubes.
Gomez, who always got that job because he was small and slender, dutifully dropped his instruments into his overall pockets and crawled into the left firing tube. Half an hour later he stuck his head out of the tube and yelled to Jacobs, who was in charge of the job:
"Amigo! How many hours this ship she got?"
Jacobs ran his finger down a chart and discovered to his surprise that the Astra had only two hundred hours on its log since the last overhaul. Ordinarily a ship was checked each thousand hours. He scratched his head but decided that if Operations wanted the Astra tuned it was none of his business. So he told Gomez not to ask useless questions and to get back in the tube.
Anyone else but Gomez would have obeyed orders and forgotten all about it. Ten minutes later Jacobs saw Armando's head appear.
"Amigo!" Gomez shouted. "How many hours?"
"Two hundred!" Jacobs shouted back, knowing he would have no peace until Gomez was answered. "Now get to work! We ain't got all year."
But Gomez was out of the tube again in five minutes and yelling for the foreman.
"What do you want now?" Jacobs demanded. He swung himself up on the catwalk beside Gomez.
"Something very funny in here, amigo," Gomez replied. "One plate she is too clean."
"Less work for you," Jacobs grunted. "So why complain?"
Nevertheless he took a look at the plate, which was near the mouth of the tube. It should have been lightly encrusted with the oxides of rocket fuel. Instead, it was only beginning to dull, in strange contrast to its neighbors which were welded to it.
"That is queer," Jacobs muttered.
"Si. As you say, amigo. Queer."
Once Jacob's interest was aroused he was also not one to let a matter drop; he told Gomez to work on another tube while he consulted the front office. The front office was not especially interested, but at Jacobs' insistence they called in a metallurgist. The metallurgist, whose name was Britton, was fortunately a thorough young man. He ordered the plate removed and sent to his laboratory for complete analysis.
After that things happened fast. Britton scanned the analysis of the plate and without hesitation called in his superior who ordered a second test just to be safe, and then notified Washington. Washington turned it over to Interplanetary Intelligence, of which Carson was chief of staff.
One week later Ben Sessions stood before Carson's desk.
* * * * *
Sessions was only thirty-five, but in his few years with "Two Eyes," as the organization was known, he had rung up an enviable record. Tall, lithe, darkly handsome, he was well liked by the men who worked with him. At the moment there was a puzzled frown on his face, lengthening the line made by a scar which ran from his forehead down the side of his nose. The scar was the result of a crash landing on Neptune.
"I don't get it, sir," he said. "A single plate from a rocket tube . . . So what if it didn't oxidize?"
"That makes me feel much better." Carson smiled, an inner bitterness making the smile wry. "I didn't get it either," he went on. "A mechanic named Gomez got it; a foreman named Jacobs got it; a lab man named Britton got it; but the chief of "Two Eyes" missed the boat. I feel swell about that." He rose suddenly and hammered his fist on the desk. "Every one of us in Intelligence ought to be cashiered!"
"Take it easy," Ben cautioned. "All because of that plate?"
Carson slumped back into his chair. "Yes. And because we have failed in our duty. Our only hope is that we may have time to make it up. I'll give you the facts:
"Those tubes are made of Virium, but even Virium develops scale. After next week it will develop even more, because next week we make the changeover to the new fuel. If Wayne had made his mistake two weeks later there would have been so much deposit in the tubes that Gomez would not have noticed the difference.
"Now, Virium is one of the most standardized products in the world. So Gomez was rightly astonished that the tube didn't oxidize evenly. Jacobs saw further. Virium is the toughest metal we know of; if this piece was tougher it might be a discovery of major importance. So Britton analyzed the plate."
"Now we get to the point," Sessions grinned.
Carson stabbed a finger at him. "Right. And the point is that this one section of plate is not Virium! In fact, it is a substance which we are positive does not exist in our system!"
"Wait a second. What do you mean by 'system'?"
"I mean every single bit of matter that lies between here and Ventura B."
"Maybe it's not a natural substance. Not an element."
"We thought of that. It's an element, and one we know nothing of."
"Do you mind if I sit down, sir?" Ben asked suddenly.
The enormity of the thing had struck him, almost dazzling him with its implications. Carson laughed bitterly and waved him to a chair, then went on talking.
"Precisely, Ben. The question is: How did this strange substance get into the tube of an Interplanetary rocket called the Astra? To answer that we checked on the ship. The Astra is one of the few ships which have ever gone beyond Ventura B!"
"I almost expected to hear that," Sessions said.
"It adds up, all right, doesn't it? A foreign substance, a foreign system. But this substance had been made into a plate. That means the work of intelligent beings."
"Who took the Astra on that trip?" Sessions asked, his body tense.
"A licensed space explorer named Murchison. Two others went with him but he returned alone. Claims they fell into a chasm."
"But no explorer has reported life beyond Ventura B," Sessions said, taking up the thread of thought. He whistled softly. "You must have been busy this last week."
"Busy is no word for it. It's only three years since anyone has been allowed to go outside our system. For the purpose of science Interstellar Flight granted permits to six licensed explorers. All returned with charts showing only a desolate waste. In our own quiet way we have checked on each of these six men, including Murchison, in the last week."
"And . . . ?"
"And we discovered something very interesting. The six who returned from beyond Ventura B were not the same six who went! They are identical in every facial, bodily, and mental characteristic, identical enough to fool even the families of the lost explorers. But when we secretly photographed them with infra-red light we found that their skins contained elements foreign to our system!"
Ventura A and its sister star were the twin beacons that marked the last outposts of the Earth System. Past them was only a trackless waste of inter-stellar space. Ben Sessions knew that the charts he carried were probably worse than useless, were likely downright traps.
He and Carson had planned the trip. Carson had wanted to send a fighting fleet but Ben had opposed the idea. Wayne's mistake had led them to the uncovering of a gigantic hoax, a hoax which could have only a sinister purpose. Somewhere in the void ahead were sentient beings. To send a fleet would be to let them know that their existence was suspected.
Sessions let the automatic controls take over while he examined the charts once more. They showed the constellation which lay directly ahead, the one after that, and then nothing for hundreds of millions of miles. Those first two reflected a tiny amount of light from Ventura B and were visible through telescopes, therefore it would have created suspicion to falsify their position. Past them, however, the blackness was too intense to penetrate.
The speed of the rocket ship increased. Atomic blasts replaced those of the regular fuel. Sessions knew that an Earth measurement would have shown the ship to have shrunk to half its size. Only light and the radona beam which protected the ship from collisions could travel faster.
From now on it was just a matter of luck. Someone had pulled those six explorers out of space and Sessions was hoping the same thing would happen to him. On the third day it happened.
He was sitting in the pilot's chair, watching the radona chart before him. Most of the chart was blank, only the upper right hand corner showing a mass of black dots which indicated a planetary dispersal about a dead star. Sessions waited for the radona beam to swing the ship leftward.
Instead, the ship was curving in the direction of the dots! Ben's first thought was that the beam had gone out of order, and he switched to manual controls. No use. Despite all his efforts he was being carried toward those planets.
Habit made him shut off the tubes. Why waste fuel? A tight smile froze on his lips as his speed dropped to twenty million miles then lifted again as the ship by-passed a planet. With calm deliberation Ben switched on the camera he had installed before the flight and let it record his course as shown on the radona chart.
Only one dot remained on the chart. It grew larger and larger until it filled the entire screen. There was no longer any doubt as to the ship's destination, and as if to add further proof its speed dropped sharply. Ben clicked the switch on the camera and removed a tiny roll of microfilm. The roll fit snugly into the hollow cap which covered the stub of one of his molars.
The altitude indicator went on automatically, showed fifty thousand feet, then forty thousand, went down to hundreds. Ahead there was only blackness. Ben held his breath and waited for the crash. It never came. Long after the altimeter showed zero the ship still moved. Ben could think of only one explanation: he was below the surface of the dark planet! And then he could think no more; the blackness seemed to filter into the ship and into his mind.
* * * * *
"He awakens," a voice said. It was a pleasant voice, a feminine one, silky and soothing.
Ben Sessions sat up and said, "Huh?"
The first thing he noticed was the light. No more darkness, but a light that came from nowhere and yet was everywhere. He was on some sort of couch, in a huge room with a vaulted ceiling. Shaking his head groggily, Ben looked for the source of the silken voice. He was alone in the room.
His eyes ran down the length of his body. The flash gun was gone from his belt. That was hardly unexpected. But the belt was gone too. So were his clothes. He was clad in a loose robe of shimmering white cloth.
That meant he had been unconscious for some time. How long? Ben would have given much to know. Suddenly he let out an unearthly moan, threw his arms wide and rolled off the couch. He lay still.
The silken voice was raised again and added to it was another, more masculine. Then a door opened and two people stepped into the room. Ben sat up and grinned at them, especially at the woman.
"I thought that would get you," he said. "It's not hospitable to hide from your guest."
"Resourceful, isn't he?" The woman raised her eyebrows in mock admiration. Her companion growled a reply which Ben couldn't quite catch.
They were an odd pair, the woman towering well above ten feet but perfectly formed, her skin the color of pink marble; the man more beast than human. The women of Saturn were as tall as she, Ben had time to think, but not nearly as beautiful.
"Welcome to Teris, Ben Sessions," she said. Her smile was the smile of the serpent of Eden.
"You're pretty resourceful yourself," Ben grinned.
He had carried no papers except a blanket permit from Interstellar Flight. He wondered if the precaution he and Carson had taken would prove to be in vain. The woman spoke again.
"Ben Sessions, graduate of Neptune School of Rockets; born in Taos, New Mexico, Earth; third of four children; unmarried, unattached at present; first position, co-pilot Earth-Vega Express . . ."
She seemed to be choosing items at random from a memorized list. The exhibition was intended to impress Ben and it was succeeding. More than that, however, it was frightening. He held his breath as she neared the end.
". . . two years with Interstellar Communications; presently a licensed space explorer, non-affiliated."
"Pretty good," Ben said.
It was better than that. It was perfect. Only the end was wrong. He and Carson had worked that out with the psychoanalyst. The two of them had wanted to falsify the entire biography, but the analyst had convinced them he was right.
"One lie I might attempt to pound into your very subconscious by hypnotism; a dozen would be spread too thin. We would leave holes. Under the type of electroanalysis you seem to think might be used on you I can't even promise one lie will hold up."
Ben reminded himself to recommend the man for honors if he ever got back to Earth. He had certainly known his business; but then, if he hadn't he would not be working for "Two Eyes."
"Now that you've told me all about myself maybe you'll tell me what's going on," Ben said.
"One of your compatriots can do that," the woman told him. Her interest seemed suddenly to have waned.
She said a few words in a strange tongue to the man who stood at her side. He grunted, bowed, and advanced toward Ben. Long arms, covered with thick black hair, reached out. Ben dodged.
"You'll be sorry if you make him use force," the woman said.
"Nothing like trying," Ben told her. He avoided another grab and stepped in and smashed his fist to the hairy man's jaw.
He might as well have hit a wall. Before Ben could strike another blow he was lifted from his feet by an upward slap that threatened to tear loose one side of his face. Too dazed to resist, he felt both his wrists encircled by a tremendous hand. The woman's voice rose sharply in a tone of command.
* * * * *
The corridor through which Ben Sessions was being led was thronged with people. There seemed to be three classes: rosy-skinned giantesses like his escort; men of his own size, but also with pink complexions; and the squat, hairy men who appeared to be nothing more than slaves.
It was plain that women dominated this society, and from them Ben received curious but contemptuous glances. Any one of these Amazons would have been considered a beauty on Earth, so regular were their features, but they lacked an air of feminine softness. Instead, cruelty lay thinly masked beneath the surface.
At the end of the long corridor a huge door swung open and Ben was led through it into an immense room. At the far end of the room was a throne, and on it a woman. Ben blinked. As well proportioned as the others he had seen, she was half again as tall, twice as beautiful. He could not contain a gasp of appreciation.
Thick violet hair fell almost to her shoulders, her skin was luminous and flawless, her body breathtaking, more revealed than concealed by a clinging gown of some filmy material. At her breast, flashed a single violet jewel larger by far than the famed sapphires of Uranus.
"I brought him as soon as he awakened," said the woman with Ben.
A malevolent stare from the woman on the throne rested on Ben. "It was unnecessary," she said. "We have no further need of him. Take him to the field."
"Wait a minute," Ben snapped.
"You are addressing Arndis, Queen of Teris," he heard his escort say.
"I don't give a hoot . . ." He never finished the sentence. From behind the hairy slave seized him, lifted him and flung him bodily toward the doors. The interview was over.
They went for a while along the same corridor, then turned off and followed a side passage for a way. It led steadily downward to an arched opening and through that out of the building. Here too the light was diffused, but much brighter. Ben had to blink several times before he became adjusted to it.
They were standing in the center of a vast level plain, apparently endless and roofless, for overhead there was no sky, only an increasing intensity of light. Ranged in rows on the plain were thousands of space ships. Ben turned once as they approached the first line of ships and saw behind him the building from which he had just come. It rose upward, a single block of shining stone, for almost a mile. Alongside it were other buildings of the same material, but none so large.
Then Ben and his two escorts were past the first rows of ships. His eyes roved over them, trying to discover what armament they carried. None was visible. Their firing tubes were much the same as those of Earth design, but slightly smaller.
His attention was diverted from his study by a sudden disturbance aboard the closest ship. The sound of an angry feminine voice came clearly through an open porthole, and mingled with it was a pleading, deeper tone. An instant later a door was flung open and out of it came hurtling one of the men of Teris. He hit the ground, rolled over, and came to his knees facing the open door and the giant woman who stood framed in it.
* * * * *
That the man was pleading for his very life was obvious to Ben, but it was equally plain that his pleas were having no effect. The woman on the ship uttered a single contemptuous word that cut the pleas short. On her face was a sadistic anticipation such as Ben had never before seen. Slowly she raised a cylinder in her hand and pointed it at the man on the ground.
From the cylinder came a violet light, weak at first, but growing in intensity as she pressed some sort of trigger. The man shrieked in agony as the light played on him. Then the smell of burning flesh came to Ben's nostrils, and the shriek became a single high pitched scream which choked off suddenly.
Ben's escort laughed with ghoulish enjoyment, said something to the woman in the doorway, and gestured at the charred body on the ground. The violet light grew to blinding intensity. A puff of smoke and the body was gone.
"What was that for?" Ben gasped.
His escort smiled indulgently and shot a question at the other woman. The reply was a shrug of shoulders and a few short syllables.
"He did something that displeased her," she told Ben. At his look of horror she laughed again, apparently pleased to have shocked him.
He noticed, as they went along, that the space ships decreased in size. Those in the first rows had been comparable to Earth's battle cruisers, those in the last were one or two man jobs. His own ship, the Rapier, was at the very end of the last line.
Beyond was a vast army of men, both rosy skinned and hairy, at work on a gigantic excavation project. Great power shovels scooped load after load of earth. But most of the work was being done by the men who labored with primitive pick and shovel.
Above the sound of digging rose the sharp voices of the giant women of Teris, each with a battalion under her command. As far as Ben's eyes could reach men were digging at the ground.
He was hustling along to a point where a dirt spattered group struggled with a metallic lining for the half-mile hole it had excavated. At that point his escort turned him over to the woman who bossed that crew. Ben saw in the hand of the overseer one of the violet ray cylinders.
"Down there," she said curtly, pointing to where a small knot of men worked on a terrace fifty feet below. "They will tell you what to do."
Ben had found nothing strange in the fact that his escort had spoken English fluently. She had been present at his electroanalysis. But he doubted that all the women of Teris could have the same command of the language. Nevertheless he said nothing and clambered down the ladder to the terrace beneath. Ben's unasked question was answered when he saw the five faces turned up toward him.
* * * * *
Earth men! Even the grime that covered them could not hide that. And there was added proof in their widening eyes. They were sorry to see another Earth man captive, yet happy at sight of one of their own kind. Willing hands helped Ben down from the bottom rung of the ladder.
"We'd heard they had picked up another ship," one of the men said. "But we weren't sure the rumor was true."
"True enough, as you can see. I'm Ben Sessions."
His outstretched hand was grasped and shaken cordially. Names were flung at him. Murchison, Davies, Kennard, Bannon, Murchison.
"Wait a second," Ben said. "I thought I heard Murchison twice."
"You did," said the big, rawboned man at whom he was staring. "The first is my daughter Sally."
It was only then that Ben noticed how small and slender was the figure of the one next to Murchison. Even the girl's loose robe, similar to that of the men, could not quite conceal her femininity. Her hair was cut short, her hands toil hardened.
"Carson didn't tell me," Ben muttered. He grinned at Murchison. "I expected to find you and two assistants, but I didn't know one would be your daughter."
"Expected--?" Hope glinted in five pairs of eyes. Above them there was a shouted command to get to work, and a cylinder was waved threateningly.
"I'll explain as we go along," Ben said hastily. "Show me what to do."
Bannon, a short, thickset man with a mop of unruly black hair shoved a pair of tongs into Ben's hands and quickly explained how to hold the rivets with which the group was working. In effect they were constructing a huge cylinder. Looking down, Ben saw that it descended into the bowels of Teris.
The others were pressing Ben for his explanation but he insisted that they tell their stories first. The same thing had happened to them as to him. Within some thousands of miles of Teris they had felt a force pull them toward it. Then they had passed out and awakened to find themselves prisoners.
"I know all that," Ben said. "But in all the time you've been here you must have found out a good deal. What goes on here? Why are they taking prisoner every one who approaches the planet? Why do they conceal its existence from our system?"
Murchison paused between blows of his hammer, as though to wipe sweat from his brow.
"Since you seem in a hurry," he said, "I will tell it in brief. You are in the center of a planet whose evil people are engaged in one enterprise: the conquering and subjugating of our universe."
"I thought that might be it," Ben nodded. "But subjugating billions of people may prove tougher than they think."
"Their intention is to reduce our population so it can be easily handled. And I can assure you that these women are perfectly capable of slaughtering as many people as they think necessary. They have both the means and the contempt for human life that such an undertaking requires."
Ben hazarded a guess. "This project is part of their preparation?"
"The final part. Since the surface of Teris has a temperature of absolute zero it can only be reached from here through a series of locks. What they are building now are new locks big enough to handle their largest ships. As soon as that's done they plan to attack."
"Any idea when that will be?"
"About a week, Earth time." Murchison's shoulders sagged with despair. "We've been wracking our brains for a way to stop them, but it's no use. They're as clever as they are evil. They've even sent doubles of each of us men to Earth to pave the way for the attack. I suppose you've seen your double."
"No."
"Then they haven't made one. You have to be awake while it's being done. I suppose they didn't think it necessary now that there's so little time left."
"Less time than I thought," Ben grunted. "I'd better get moving." He tilted his head back and shouted to the woman above.
* * * * *
For a second time Ben stood before Arndis, queen of Teris. Her eyes probed at him, trying to divine his thoughts. There was anger in those eyes. If she detected a single flaw in his story it would mean Ben's death. More than that, it would mean disaster for Earth. He talked fast.
"When we found that plate in the firing tube of Murchison's ship we knew he was lying. We figured he'd discovered valuable deposits out here and was trying to keep them secret."
"That was all?"
"It's enough, isn't it? Enough for Interplanetary Intelligence to send me on this mission. Those false papers I carried are proof that we suspected something. And if I'm not back in the time we allowed they'll have our entire battle fleet out looking for me."
"Very clever," Arndis smiled. "But if you are trying to frighten us you are failing. The women of Teris had a high civilization before your Earth was born. We can do things you never dreamed of."
At her command Ben's arms were seized and bound behind him. He was carried swiftly into a room nearby, a room filled with a maze of scientific apparatus. On what appeared to be an operating table was a transparent shell, and beneath this Ben was strapped.
Through the shell he saw one of the men of Teris brought into the room and placed in a similar position on another table. Wires were strung between the two shells and somewhere a machine began to hum. The shells filled with a white vapor that lingered a moment and then was gone.
Although he had known what was to happen Ben could not control his amazement. For the man who came out of the other shell was an exact replica of himself! Within minutes he saw the other dressed in his own flying suit.
"You see how simply we solve the problem?" Arndis asked. "Ben Sessions will return to Earth and there will be no search. He will report that he found nothing and request that he be allowed to try again. By that time we shall be ready to attack."
Ben's arms had been untied, and now he put his hand to his face, as though to rub some tender spot. The move attracted no undue attention. An instant later he had two fingers inside his mouth and was working loose the cap over his tooth.
His next move took them completely by surprise. With a leap he was half way across the room and lunging for his double. Ben brought the man down with a flying tackle and for seconds they wrestled on the floor. Then a hairy hand tore Ben loose and he was hauled to his feet. He had done little harm to the other.
"Not quite fast enough," Arndis said. "Within minutes he will be aboard the Rapier and on his way." Her voice rose. "Take this one back to the locks."
* * * * *
"Doesn't it ever get dark here?" Ben asked.
He and Murchison and the others had been allowed to come out of the tube after what seemed hours of toil. They sat now in a tiny cell into which air came through slits in the wall.
"No," Murchison said. "But Bannon has a good watch and we're able to keep track of time. It's exactly six days and three hours since you were put to work."
Ben nodded thoughtfully. There was not much time left. Work on the locks went on endlessly, and sooner than he could have believed possible they were being completed. Given enough slaves, he thought, anything could be accomplished.
Gluing his eyes to one of the slits, he peered out. The last of the giant gates was being installed. Their own crew would have only one more shift before the job was finished.
Beyond the excavation Ben could see the tower from which the locks were controlled. Bannon, who had been in Teris longest and who had managed to garner some information, had explained their operation to Ben.
"I worked on the new controls when they were being installed," he said, ranging himself alongside Ben. "They're fully automatic. There are five locks in each tube between the interior and the surface of Teris."
"How many ships did you say were kept at the tower?" Ben asked.
"About ten. They make inspection flights each day, although nothing has ever gone wrong that I've heard of. But the tubes and the locks are the only outlets to the surface and they watch them carefully."
"What are our chances of getting to the tower?"
"Zero, I should say. Only the women are allowed to enter it, or a small crew under their supervision."
"Willing to make a try?" Ben asked. He swung around to face them all. Until now he had not taken them into his confidence, given them no inkling of what was in his mind.
"We've talked about it before," Murchison answered. "But there's so little chance we gave up the idea. Better to stay alive and hope for a rescue."
"I can't tell you how I know," Ben told them, "but there isn't going to be any rescue." He kept his eyes on the girl. "How about you, Sally? Willing to trust me?"
She nodded and Ben heaved a sigh of relief. Rather than leave her behind he would have stayed with her. Gathering them about him he outlined his plans. The men were more than skeptical but no one had any suggestions.
* * * * *
Ben and Davies were the last to finish their work, and as they fastened the last rivet to the last hinge Ben looked up and shook his head. To the giant woman who stood watching him it seemed only that he was tired. She failed to notice that Sally had drifted off to one side and was coming up behind her.
Sally's foot suddenly caught the overseer just behind one knee and knocked her off balance. At the same instant Ben stepped in close and wrenched the violet ray cylinder from the woman's hand. The others screened them from sight. Ben looked around and saw that the slight flurry of activity had gone unnoticed by others of the giant women who were nearby.
"We're going to walk to the control tower," he told the woman grimly. "If anyone asks you're to say we have to do some work there. I'm going to have this ray gun trained on you under my robe, so don't try any tricks. Understand?"
She understood all too well. A flicker of fear in her eyes told Ben that she knew he would blast her without mercy. They fell in behind her.
When they reached the doors of the tower a pair of women barred their way.
"We have received no notice of work to be done," one of them said. Ben saw her eyes narrow with sudden suspicion, and then her hand darted for the cylinder at her side.
Ben's ray gun spouted violet death and the charred bodies of three women lay in the doorway. Ben scooped up their guns and thrust them at Bannon and Murchison.
"We'll give you five minutes before we take off," he shouted as they ran past him for the control room.
Behind him and Davies and Sally there were shouts as the two men went into action. But they had their own job to do. The closest inspection ship was several hundred feet away and already women were running to cut them off. Ben cut loose with his cylinder before they had a chance to use theirs.
Then he and Davies were lifting Sally into the ship. While they covered the open door Ben ran for the controls. Somewhere an alarm was wailing and as he swung the ship about Ben saw other ships being boarded. But Bannon and Murchison had not failed. Just beyond the tower a lock swung open.
Ben skimmed along the ground, figuring to pick up the two men as they came out of the tower. Then he saw Murchison wave him on. He had planted himself in the doorway and was refusing to budge. Ben saw why as Murchison blasted away at a group of giant women who were trying to rush the tower.
There was no more time. Already other ships were taking off. Another wasted minute and they would beat him to the lock. Ben yelled to Davies to close the hatch as he turned on the power.
A moment later they were in the blackness of the tube. Davies ran forward to the controls. "There's a light on the ship," he said. He found the switch and threw it in time for them to see the next lock open for them.
"Three to go," Ben muttered. "Looks like we're going to make it."
"Maybe not." Davies tapped his shoulder and pointed to the rear of the ship. Looking back through a porthole, Ben could see other ships behind them.
"As long as we're in the tube they won't fire," Davies said. "But neither can we get very far ahead!"
While he spoke the ship had gone through another lock with the others still directly behind. It looked like Davies was right. But Ben was not yet ready to concede defeat. The fourth lock loomed ahead and he watched it swing open. Just a few minutes more and they would go through the last one. It was still hundreds of miles ahead but at the rate they were travelling they would be on it soon.
He waited until the last possible second and then cut his speed sharply. Behind them the other ships were forced to use their retarding rockets for fear of ramming them. It was just what Ben had expected. As the last lock opened he threw the accelerator all the way forward and felt the ship leap ahead.
That alone would not have been enough, but as the ship roared out of the tube above the surface of Teris he cut sharply to the right. Had their ship been faster it might have worked. But it was not fast enough. Through the blackness of space the exhausts of their pursuers flamed closer. Ben's teeth clamped down on his lips.
"I guess we're out of luck."
There was nothing more to say. It was only a matter of minutes before the guns of the ships behind them would blast them to pieces. They held their breath and waited, watching the exhausts come through the darkness.
And then suddenly there was no more darkness. A light as bright as the noon sun flared. Ben let out a shout, for beyond the light were lined the battle cruisers of Earth. His pursuers turned tail and ran.
"Where the devil did those ships come from?" Davies gasped.
"I sent for them," Ben told him. "We had it all arranged. When I tackled that double I managed to slip a microfilm capsule into his pocket. It had a complete picture of my radona chart. As soon as the double reached Earth, Intelligence grabbed him. All they had to do was follow my chart to Teris."
They were passing the flagship of the Earth fleet, and Ben dipped the nose of his ship in salute. Then he turned to see what was going on.
There was going to be no attempt to invade Teris. Instead, its surface was illuminated with more of the flares. A moment later Teris was gone, blasted by the guns of a thousand cruisers. And for the strange women who would have enslaved a universe, Ben felt no pity.
THE END
G-R-R-R...!
by Robert Donald Locke
He had borne the thousand and one injuries with humility and charity. But the insults! These were more than he could suffer....
Gr-r-r! There he goes again! Brother Ambrose could scarce restrain the hatred that seethed and churned in his breast, as his smallish eyes followed Brother Lorenzo headed once more for his beloved geraniums, the inevitable watering-pot gripped in both hands, the inevitable devotions rising in a whispered stream from his saintly lips. The very fact the man lived was a mockery to human justice: God's blood, but if thoughts could only kill.
Ave, Virgo!
The thousand and one injuries of Fray Lorenzo he had borne as a Christian monk should, with humility and charity. But the insults, aye, the insults to faith and reason! They were more than a generous Father could expect His most adoring servant to suffer, weren't they? To have to sit next to the man, for instance, at evening meal and hear his silly prattle of the weather. Next year's crop of cork: we can scarcely expect oak-galls, he says. Isn't petroselinum the name for parsley? (No, it's Greek, you swine. And what's the Greek name for Swine's Snout? I could hurl it at you, like the Pope hurling anathema.) Salve tibi! It sticks in one's craw to bless him with the rest. Would God our cloister numbered thirty-and-nine instead of forty.
For days now, for weeks, Brother Ambrose had witnessed and endured the false piety of the man. How he'd ever got admitted to the order in the first place beat all supposition. It must have been his sanctimonious apple-cheeks or (Heaven forbid such simony), some rich relative greased the palm of the Prior. Saint, forsooth!
Brother Ambrose recalled just a week previous; they had been outside the walls, a round dozen of the brothers, gathering the first few bushels of grapes to make the good Benedictine wine. And all men tended to their duty in the vineyard—save who? Save lecherous Lorenzo, whose job was to attend the press. Picked the assignment himself, most likely, so he could ogle the brown thighs and browner ankles of Dolores squatting on the Convent bank, gitana slut with her flashing eyes and hint of sweet delight in those cherry-red lips and coquettish tossing shoulders. A man could see she was child of the devil, flesh to tempt to eternal hellfire.
But how skillful Brother Lorenzo had been in keeping the glow in his dead eye from being seen by the others! Only Ambrose had known it was there. Invisible to even the world, perhaps; but lurking just the same in Lorenzo's feverishly disguised brain. Si, there and lusting beyond a doubt. By one's faith, the blue-black hair of Dolores would make any weak man itch; and the stories that had floated on the breeze that day, livelily exchanged between her and that roguish Sanchicha, the lavandera; Lorenzo must surely have lapped them all up like a hungry spaniel, though he cleverly turned his head away so you would not guess. After all, Ambrose, scarcely a step closer, could recall clearly every word of the bawdy tales!
Back to the table again; and Brother Ambrose once more noticed how Fray Lorenzo never let his fork and knife lie crosswise, an obvious tribute he, himself, always made in Our Senor's praise. Nor did Lorenzo honor the Trinity by drinking his orange-pulp in three quiet sips; rather (the Arian heretic) he drained it at a gulp. Now, he was out trimming his myrtle-bush. And touching up his roses.
Gr-r-r, again! Watching his enemy putter away in the deepening twilight that followed the decline of the Andalusian sun, Brother Ambrose recalled the other traps he had lain to trip the hypocrite. Traps set and failed; but, oh, so delicious anyhow, these attempts to send him flying off to Hell where he belonged: a Cathar or a Manichee. That last one, involving the pornographic French novel so scrofulous and wicked. How could it failed to have snared its prey? Especially, when Fray Ambrose had spent such sleepless nights, working out his plot in great detail?
Brother Ambrose allowed himself an inward chortle, as he paced along the portico, recollecting how close to success the scheme had come. The book had had to be read first (or re-read, rather) by Ambrose to determine just which chapter would be most apt to damn a soul with concupiscent suggestion. Gray paper with blunt type, the whole book had been easy enough to grasp for that matter—what with the words so badly spelled out. The cuckoldry tales of Boccaccio and that gay old archpriest, Juan Ruiz de Hita, what dry reading they seemed by comparison—almost like decretals.
As if by misadventure, Brother Ambrose had left the book in Lorenzo's cell, the pages doubled down at the woeful sixteenth print. Ah, there had been a passage! Simply glancing at it, you groveled hand and foot in Belial's grip.
But, that twice-cursed Lorenzo must have had the devil's luck that day. A breeze sprang up to flip the volume closed; and the monk, not knowing the book's owner and espying only its name, had handed it over to the Prior who had promptly turned the monastery upside down in search of further such adulterous contraband!
Worse fortune followed. The next day, Brother Lorenzo had come down with a temporary stroke of blindness—it lasted only a week; but even so, for seven days Ambrose had been forced to labor in his stead in the drafty library, copying boresome scrolls in a light scarcely less dim than moonlight. Worse still, the Prior had found mistakes: letters dropped, transposed (Latin was so bothersomely regular; compared to the vulgar tongue). For what he called such "inexcusable slovenliness," the Prior had imposed a penance of bread and water and extra toil.
Slovenliness! Why didn't the Prior—was he blind, too?—notice the deadly sins that were each day so neatly practised by Brother Lorenzo? They went unpunished. Probably, God's Angel would even be found to have been asleep when Judgment Day came around and Lorenzo would slip into Heaven by a wink, as one might say.
Obviously, there was no justice, except such as man would make himself, Brother Ambrose had at last decided.
Ave Maria, plena gratia.
Now at last, he was alone in his cell, free finally from the unendurable (sometimes it seemed everlasting) torment of Brother Lorenzo's presence. Twenty-nine distinct damnations listed in Galatians, if you cared to look up the text; and not one of them could the enemy be made to trip on, a-dying.
In fact, of late, so bad had the situation grown that Brother Ambrose had even once considered pledging his soul to Satan. Oh, not for keeps! No enmity was worth that dread sacrifice. But as a trick, sort of—with a flaw in the indenture that proud Lucifer would miss until it was too late to wriggle out of the bargain.
But that had been two days ago.
Now, a better scheme presented itself to Brother Ambrose, engendered by that forced labor within the dreary precincts of the convent library. For that was where (and when) he had made his delightful discovery, the one that would now redeem him from all his irritations and travail. The discovery that would rid him of Brother Lorenzo for always!
It had happened like this.
Inasmuch as the monastery was over eight hundred years old, many ancient books and moldy scrolls lay forgotten in the cobwebby corners of the great library, especially where the light was gloomy. One afternoon during his week of enforced toil, Brother Ambrose had sought the shelter of one of these ill-lighted and seldom-visited nooks of the building to recover certain lost hours of sleep, hours that had gone astray the night before as he sat up in his lonely cell and brooded over his wrongs. But before his drowsy head could nod off into dreams completely, his eye had chanced to notice a faded scroll that jutted forth from its fellows on the shelves. Starting to push the offender back in place, Ambrose's fingers had hesitated when he noticed the title: De Necromantiae.
Surely, thought the monk, such a book belonged on the Index. Then, it occurred to him that possibly the copy in front of him was the only one of its kind in the world, in which case not even the Holy Father could be expected to know it existed. Then, how could it be on the Index or be forbidden?
Taking advantage of this personal achievement in casuistry, Brother Ambrose promptly untied the scroll and began reading.
What he discovered there interested him very much. We do not intend to describe all of the marvels unfolded for him in that venerable mildewed manuscript, for some of the more gruesome mysteries of the supernatural world are better left unrevealed; but let it be said at least, that one chapter intrigued Brother Ambrose immensely. So much so, that he shamelessly whipped out his scissors and, nipping that section, stuck it inside his rough wool robes so he might peruse it at greater leisure within the privacy of his cell.
The chapter that evoked such delight and interest within Brother Ambrose's complicated brain was one that had been penned in the early ages of the Church by a lay-brother who had concerned himself with pagan magic. In it, he had described the fiendish habits and activities of werewolves and had actually even presented a formula. Ut Fiat Homo Lupinus it was entitled, which purported to give the secret words and ritual necessary to achieve the transformation from man to beast.
At last, the opportunity had arrived Ambrose's way to achieve his long-desired revenge on Brother Lorenzo!
Twenty-four hours had passed since the momentous discovery. The moment was at hand. Night again had settled upon the Spanish cloisters, the last bell had tolled; and all the good and hardy men were supposed to be at sound sleep on their rough iron cots. But in Brother Ambrose's chilly cell, a small candle burned—casting sickly light that produced huge flickering shadows against the whitewashed walls.
Brother Ambrose held the treasured piece of manuscript between his hands. It was difficult to make out the faded Latin; the writing was cramped and crude, and Ambrose was no scholar to boot. But like all persons of his times, he was quite well-aware of the existence of werewolves, werefoxes, and other such monsters; and he held no doubt but what the spell would work.
It was the scheming brother's plan to creep in the stealth of night down the corridor to the barred oak door of Lorenzo's own simple cell. There, he would knock; lightly enough to disturb no other sleepers, yet loud enough that the rapping would summon Brother Lorenzo from whatever wicked dreams might be festering in his own sleeping mind.
As Fray Lorenzo's naked footsteps were heard pattering across the bare floor, Ambrose would drink the bat's blood he had collected, sniff the wolfbane he had ground to ash, and pronounce the obscure Celtic words that would alter the very atoms of his flesh, transforming them into an obscene travesty of life. Brother Lorenzo, when he opened the door, would be met not by a fellow human being, but by a snarling fanged wolf that would hurl its hairy bulk at the drowsy monk's own throat.
The next day, the entire monastery would be awakened, of course, by shouts of the news that foul murder had been discovered. But no amount of detection would ever manifest the bestial murderer. Brother Ambrose would hug to his soul the secret of his crime until the day of his shriving.
At length, the hour had grown so late that it was certain even the Prior himself must have long since retired.
Brother Ambrose made ready to carry out his deed. He rose from his cot, removed the coarse brown robe that normally he wore to bed as well as in his daily rounds so that his long-unwashed body stood naked. There must be no chance for tell-tale blood to stain his clothes, when his fierce talons and wolfish teeth tore and rended at human flesh.
Carrying his precious piece of scroll, he departed from his cell and groped his way down the stone corridor until the light improved enough for him to see his way. Luckily, a patch of moonlight illuminated the very space in front of the accursed Brother Lorenzo's door. What fortune!
Brother Ambrose halted and stared at the door as though his eyes could see through it, at the sleeping form within. He sucked in a deep breath. His palms were sweaty; his heartbeat rapid. For a moment, he was almost ready to back out.
Then suddenly, the memory of all the hundreds of grudges he bore against Lorenzo surged through him. Hatred built up a massive reservoir, that broke out over his crumbling conscience and flooded his body with anger and wild resentment. His teeth gritted. What had he been thinking of—to retreat now, with revenge so nearly at hand!
He rapped. A moment later, he heard a creaking sound like Brother Lorenzo slipping out of bed.
Trembling, he lifted the phial of bat's blood, drank it down. It tasted salty. He chewed on the wolfbane powder until it mixed with the saliva of his mouth, then he swallowed. Holding the ancient scroll-segment before him, he began to repeat the badly-written incantation: Ut fiat homo lupinus, pulvis arnicae facenda est et dum....
A thousand jolts assailed his body, as if he had been struck by all the lightnings in heaven. Then, came a rushing paralysis, a distortion of time and space, a dread feeling of disintegration and death ...
The door to Brother Lorenzo's cell began to recede, swelling in volume as it did. The ceiling of the corridor likewise retreated at ever-increasing pace. Staring down at his own dwindling frame, Ambrose saw that the slug-white flesh was now covered with thick fur, even as the limbs were gnarling—
Then, suddenly the door opened. Brother Lorenzo stepped out, his kindly pious face wrinkled with sleep but otherwise showing no irritation or displeasure at being summoned from his rest. At first, the monk seemed not to have noticed Ambrose's form, for he gazed above him and away.
Ambrose kept on shrinking.
Finally, Brother Lorenzo's gaze chanced to glance downward. But still, his features mirrored no recognition or alarm; only puzzlement.
Now, thought Ambrose, now is the time for me to snarl.
But no snarl, nor semblance of a snarl, emerged from his lips. Rather, his lips had elongated into long sucking proboscises, while already a third pair of limbs had commenced growing from his furred-over abdomen.
This was not a wolf-like form, he was assuming, Ambrose suddenly realized in terror. But if it was not lupine, what was it? Had he misread the incantation? Had he mispronounced a simple word?
The weird crawling form into which he had metamorphosed was now hardly an inch higher than the surface of the floor. But Ambrose's eyes had bulged into great many-faceted orbs capable of seeing objects with greater clarity than ever. Inches away from him, he made out the segment of scroll he had discarded after reading aloud from it. Crawling over to it, he perused the beginning words of the spell.
And it suddenly dawned on him (while what passed for a heart and ventricles within his pulpy form began simulating horror) that the ancient monk of centuries ago who had first copied the incantation must have been as careless of spelling as he. For the charm obviously did not convert its user into a werewolf, but rather some other animal ...
Dredging up all the miserable Latin he knew, Ambrose fished for some word similar to lupinus.
And suddenly he had it!
Pulicus! That was the word the sloppy copyist of yesteryear had wrongly transcribed.
From the word pulex, meaning "flea."
Not how to become a wolf-like man, but a flea-like man—that was what the formula had described.
Ambrose, the flea, braced himself. Gathering his powerful legs under him, he leaped in soaring flight to land upon the object of hatred—the giant Brother Lorenzo, who towered so high above him.
But the gentle and considerate Brother Lorenzo, who probably would not have hurt hair nor hide of any other creature on Earth—even he knew full well that there is only one thing you can do to discourage a flea.
Swat!
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD
By ROBERT DONALD LOCKE
Almost any phenomenon can be used--or act--for good or ill. Mutation usually brings ill--but it also brings greatness. Change can go any direction.
Hungrily, the cradled vessel's great steel nose pointed up to the distant stars. She was the Cosmos XII, newest and sleekest of the Space Service's rapidly-expanding wing of interstellar scout ships, and she was now ready for operational work.
Major Lance Cooper, a big man with space-tanned features, stood in the shadow of the control bunker and watched the swarm of ground crewmen working at last-minute speed atop the loading tower. Inside him burned a hunger, too.
Hunger, and another emotion--pride.
The pride swelled Lance's open-collared khaki shirt, as he envisioned himself at the ship's controls within a few minutes. Finally, after long years of study, sweat and dedication, he'd made it to the Big League. No more jockeying those tubby old rocket-pots to Luna! From here on, he was going to see, taste, feel what the universe was like way, way out--in Deep Space. The Cosmos XII, like her earlier sisters, was designed to plow through that shuddery nowhere the cookbooks identified as "hyperspace."
Lance's glance shifted upward, scanning the velvet backdrop of frosty white points of light against which the slender, silverish, almost wingless form stood framed. More stars than a man could visit in a lifetime! And some already within grasp!
His exultant feeling grew, and Lance kept his head tilted backward. Alpha Centauri, the most popular target, was not visible at this latitude; and Barnard's star, besides being far too faint, lay on the other side of the sun. But there shone Sirius, just as bright as it had glittered for the Greeks, and frosty Procyon, a little to the north. Both orbs twinkled and beckoned, evoking strange and demanding dreams!
One day, Man would be able to make landings. Teams of scientists outfitted to the eyebrows and trained to cope with any environment or emergency, would explore unknown jungles, llanos, steppes; tramp up and down fertile vales and hills under blue-hot alien suns. Perhaps, they might even contact native species boasting human intelligence: mammalian hunters and fishers, city-building lizards, sky-probing arachnids--who knew what?
But now, of course, all that Headquarters permitted of flights was the most furtive of reconnoitering. You hoisted your scout ship aloft under high-gee, cleared the ecliptic, then swung out of normal space and jumped. When you materialized in the new sector, you set your cameras clicking, toggled all the other instruments into recording radiation, gravity pressures, spectroscopy, at slam-bang speed. The very instant your magnetic tapes got crammed to capacity, you pressed six dozen panic buttons and scooted like a scared jackrabbit for Home, Sweet Home.
Adventure? It wasn't even mentioned on the travel posters, yet.
But, adventure would follow.
Some day.
Meanwhile, at the taxpayers' expense, you--the guardian of the Peace--had enjoyed the billion-dollar thrill of viewing our Solar System from light-years and light-years of distance. Or so the manual said, right here on Insert Page 30-Dash-11-Dash-6.
Lance thought about those veteran hype-pilots who'd already poked around in the great black Cold out there. How was it they were always compensating for their frustration?
Now, he remembered.
Having few tall tales to spellbind audiences with when they swooped back down on Home Base after their missions, the hype-pilots got around it by bragging up Terra itself, and how at least you could always depend upon good old Earth to come up with something to relax this Warp-Weary generation!
"Something, for example, such as we now hold in our hand, brothers!" Lance could hear them now. "Namely, one of these superbly-programmed cocktails, as only Casey can turn out."
(Casey was the Officers Club barkeep and much-beribboned mixologist.)
"A real 'Casey Special'--look at its pristine beauty! What better consolation can a man ask, for not having gotten to land at the apogee point of his orbit?"
"Besides"--this usually came out after two or three more tongue-loosening toasts had been quaffed to the beasts of Headquarters--"what's so blasted special about landing on some God-forsaken rock out there?
"Hell's bells! Earth is a planet too, isn't it? And when you've been cooped up in a parsec-gobbling pot for a very, very long two weeks, any planet looming in your viewscope cries to be set down upon. Your own prosaic hunk of mud is good as any!"
* * * * *
Lance Cooper's rambling thoughts broke off their aimless tracking to swing one hundred and eighty degrees in midspace and dart right back to Earth.
Here at this very moment--and less than a hundred yards away--came Terra's foremost attraction for him. His hammering heartbeat would have placed him on the "grounded" list immediately, had there been a medico with a stethoscope hanging about to detect it.
The attraction's name was Carolyn Sagen, and she was hurrying directly across the concrete apron.
Even under the incandescent work-lamps of the crew scrambling up and down the ladders, she looked as fetching as a video starlet making her first personal-appearance tour of the nation. Only the fact she was Colonel "Hard-Head" Sagen's family pride and joy kept the helmeted and half-puckered up techs on the rungs from whistling themselves dry in their enthusiasm.
Now, she had completely bypassed the work area. Here, the lighting did not reach and the paler illumination of starshine took over. It seemed to render the girl's soft blond hair and her full warm lips more intimately something belonging to Lance Cooper alone--and he liked that. He saw that she had turned up the collar of her tan coat against the night wind.
While still a step or two distant from him, Carolyn halted. Her worshiping eyes rested fully upon the big pilot. Lance thought he detected a troubled expression.
Then, the girl managed a tight smile that conveyed her outward resignment to all Man's absurd aspirations to own the galaxy:
"Don't worry about 'Security,' Lance. Dad wrote me out an O.K. to skitter up this close to the Launching Area. You know"--she gestured self-consciously--"big crucial moment ... lovers' farewell ... I pulled all the stops, but it worked."
"Matter of fact," she added, in an obvious attempt at facetiousness, "Dad opined he'd have walloped the daylights out of me, if I hadn't put up a struggle to get near my man."
Then suddenly, she was not at all brave, anymore.
Suddenly, she had burrowed into his arms. "Oh Lance, had there been no other way, I'd have clawed right through fence and revetments to get to you! Men, men! Just because something's out there, as you say ... why is it so important to build ships and go out and look at it?" Her fingers dug into Lance's shoulders. "Women are saner ... but maybe that's why men need us." The grip of her fingers shifted, tightened. "Kiss me, you big baboon."
Lance kissed her. A tender kiss, yet gusty enough that he lifted her from the ground and her high-heeled shoes kicked in free fall.
The pilot found his girl's breath warm, loving. Yet her cheeks seemed colder than even the crisp air should account for. And her body was trembling.
He planted a second kiss, then set her down.
"Hey! This is no way for a Space Service brat to carry on. Why, you're just about to--"
"To cry, Lance? No, I wasn't. It's just that ... you'll be gone so long."
He punched her playfully. "Two measly weeks out, two weeks to astrogate her back home. And once I've got my feet wet at it, it'll be like shooting ducks in an alley."
Carolyn reached out, brushed a windswept tuft of hair from above the rock-steady eyes that looked at her.
"I know, Lance. I even realize that just ten years ago, women had to put up with separations from their sweethearts or husbands that lasted months. When the old pioneer ships used to limp back and forth to Mars and Venus. But I'm different, I guess. Weak, maybe. Or just plain scared--"
This didn't sound like the blithe-spirited girl he'd pursued for a year, then wooed and subdued. Lance studied her, then said slowly: "You're scared. About what? My first flight?"
Carolyn's head bobbed timidly.
Lance flashed a reassuring grin. "Everything has to be a brand-new experience, at some time or other. Me, I prefer to look at hype-flight from the point of view of the service. A routine thing. Just takes training. Otherwise," and he shrugged, "it's no more a risk than hauling groceries upstairs to some weather satellite."
"Is it, Lance? When one or two ships out of every ten never make it back at all. Just disappear ... somewhere ... while the others--"
"One out of thirty or forty, you mean. So hyperspace is a little tricky."
"And there's always pilot error to blame, too, I suppose?"
"Now that you mention it."
"Only my man is immune from everything?"
Lance smiled, a little wryly. "Any pilot can make boo-boos, Carolyn. I'm determined to try awfully hard not to." He added a slight qualification to his statement. "I've always been pretty lucky up to now, at not getting lost."
"I thought the guidance systems and the autopilot computers took care of all the astrogation corrections?"
"On a theoretically perfect flight, yes. It's equally true, however, that hyperspace's geometry doesn't always resemble the sort of lines and angles you find in our own universe--"
* * * * *
Lance abruptly stopped, realizing he was quoting text; his mind groped for a better way to explain. But Carolyn plunged in first:
"You see, there do sometimes develop special situations."
"Sure, sometimes." An exasperation crept into Lance Cooper's voice, despite his effort to keep it out. Hell, he was just a pilot; not a rated mathematician. He'd fly hyperspace by the seat of his pants, if he had to.
"Lance," said Carolyn.
"Yes?"
"You feel it too, don't you?"
"Feel what?"
"That there is danger involved. That something dreadfully, dreadfully wrong can happen to you while you're out there. No matter what the eggheads say about it." A paroxysm of sobs suddenly racked the girl's slender body. "Oh, darling, don't go!"
"Honey, honey!" Lance patted her thin shoulders.
"I love you so much."
"Love you, too, Carolyn. You know that."
"We shouldn't have postponed the wedding. It was wrong to set the date back."
Lance shook his head. "Sorry. I couldn't see it any other way."
He hugged the girl to him; she seemed more desperately frightened than he had realized. And again, as always when it came to comforting somebody, he felt as awkward and clumsy as some big lumbering repair-tug out in space--say--trying to patch a small trim patrol craft.
But especially, he felt helpless in the presence of this frail, clinging, lovely piece of femininity he wanted so dearly. Nevertheless he could keep on trying--blundering though his words and gestures might be.
"Carolyn, you think I wanted to chance making you a widow twenty-four hours after you became a bride?" Lance took a deep breath. "So I did maintain the percentage wasn't great. Still, it does exist. I'm aware of that. I just don't let it concern me. But you, Carolyn--don't you see, hon? Lance Cooper couldn't let anything bad happen to his best girl."
"I'm trying to understand," said Carolyn.
Lance's blunt, serious face peered into hers. "Tell you what I will promise to do."
Hope cleared away some of the mistiness in Carolyn's eyes. She looked up at him. "What, Lance?"
"Once I've knocked off my shell-back trip through the hype, we'll stage the fanciest wedding this old space base ever goggled its eyes over. I'll even see to it, the chaplain samples the spiked punch. And you remember what a raconteur the padre proved to be when Light-Colonel Galache got spliced?"
Carolyn Sagen managed a wan smile.
Lance revved his pep-talk up a few hundred r.p.m. "After all, think of it this way. Suppose I hadn't beat my brains out to get into hype-training? I'd never have wound up at this base. You and me would never have met. I'd never have fallen for you like a ton of space-ballast."
"Oh, I know you're right," said Carolyn, clinging more tightly than ever to Lance's solid frame. "You're always right, just like the Space Service is always right. But I have a woman's intuition. And I ... I sense--"
Unable to finish, she released her grasp and once more withdrew into herself.
* * * * *
Lance's big muscular hand reached out, tilted the girl's chin upward. Her face was tear-stained for sure, now.
"Honey, this won't ever do."
"I can't help it."
"You're torturing yourself with useless premonitions." Lance wiped the briny shine from the girl's cheeks as he talked, his own voice getting hoarser. "Carolyn, I love you so much that I ... well, you know I happen to hunger for you more than I do that Christmas tree on my control deck. But I just couldn't give up a chance to solo out to the stars. I couldn't, baby. I'd probably be court-martialed, anyhow," he added.
"No, Lance. They wouldn't do that. Not unless you actually got into space, then turned back. I asked Major Carmody."
"Carolyn! You didn't?"
The girl nodded, affirming the truth of what she said. "Lance, I had to. T-there are some things I know about that you don't." A note of sudden urgency now tinged her voice. "Strange unfathomable things. Many of the other pilots who've come back have not been right. I think it has something to do with their having been outside of normal space--"
He stared at her. "I just now realize you're trying to tell me something."
"Lance, I happened to overhear Dad telling Mother something one night. Apparently, he'd been rolling and tossing in bed, couldn't sleep. And Mother's looked after him so long, she just had to know what was wrong. They went downstairs and she poured him a stiff drink. Then in return, Dad poured out his troubled soul to her. And Lance--"
"Yes, Carolyn?"
"The most probable reason why some hype-pilots never quite make it back to our world is that the men involved--"
"The men? You mean, the pilots?"
"No, the brass. They haven't told the pilots about the fissioning of anything that gets into hyperspace--"
Carolyn's breath gave out in a sudden gasp. Her eyes moved away alarmed, and Lance's own glance turned simultaneously. He saw Colonel "Hard-Head" Sagen and two other officers coming across the area.
Time had run out on them.
"Carolyn," Lance said, hurriedly. "I've gabbed with quite a few vets of hyperspace. At the Club and in my training, both. Sure, a man feels like he's been crammed into a concrete mixer when he's burning up light-years in a hyper ship. But after a while, I'm told, even your brains get used to being bounced around." Lance took the girl's hands and squeezed them between his. "So let's not worry, huh?"
Carolyn started to say something in rebuttal, but her father and his aides were already upon them.
Colonel Sagen was a tall thin man of erect military carriage. His features were crisscrossed with radiation scars and his voice boomed out like a military drum. Yet when one got to know him, he wasn't so gruff. On the base, he commanded two thousand military personnel and half that many scientists and techs: a tough job, and one that he was giving his best.
After returning Major Lance Cooper's brisk salute, the colonel unbent and gave his prospective son-in-law a hardy handshake.
"Lance, I hope you'll be able to keep more of a rein on this little space-filly of mine, than I've been able to. She was determined to see you off."
"I was glad to see her, colonel."
The colonel smiled. "Can't think of a man on this base I'd rather turn Carolyn over to."
"Thank you, sir," said Lance.
"Been counting the minutes to take-off, I suppose?"
"He's hardly had a chance to, Dad," Carolyn broke in. "What with me in his hair!"
One of the colonel's aides glanced at his watch, then opened up a brief case and took out a sealed envelope. The colonel relieved him of it and handed it to Lance.
"Your flight orders, Lance. Got the preset tapes installed and checked?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, you should know your onions now, if you're ever going to. Best of luck, son."
"Thank you, colonel."
Lance turned. "Good-by, Carolyn. Just four weeks now, like I said."
"I'll be waiting."
"First jump's always the hardest, I hear," spoke up the second aide, cheerily. Like a great many other execs, the officer boasted no active space rating, though he did wear the winged moons of an observer.
But Lance and Carolyn were again quite busy, and did not hear.
* * * * *
Inside the shell of the Cosmos XII, Lance, sitting flat on his back against gravity, looked up at the sweep hands on the control deck clocks and hurried through his pre-jump check list. Tension mounted inside him. He contacted the Operations people in the bunker over the radio net. Colonel Sagen's voice came in clear: "Five minutes, Lance."
"I am receiving. Area cleared?"
Traffic broke into report: "Take-off will proceed on schedule."
The function lights on the "tree" in front of Lance shone green. Gyros were caged; the tapes were set to roll. Lance's big hands hovered lightly near the manual over-rides. He was ready to fly, and the autopilot lights were already winking out in count-down. But you never could be sure until the last moment.
What had Carolyn been trying to tell him?
Before he could pursue the thought, he felt the pressure of the rising ship take hold; gently at first as she cleared the ground; then heavier and heavier, until his face felt like a rubber mask under the acceleration and his heart commenced pounding.
It didn't take long these days for any ship to build up a tremendous velocity in space. Lance cleared the ecliptic by a hundred million miles; then with the Solar System spread out flat below him, he opened up his flight orders. His destination, he discovered, was Groombridge 34, a visual double star. Right ascension: zero hours, thirteen minutes. Declination: forty-three and four-tenths degrees. Nearly twelve light-years distant.
Since the star's apparent location was nearly halfway up the sky from the celestial equator, Lance could begin the jump any time and not worry on his way about skewing too near the gravitational field of any large-massed body in his own immediate vicinity.
He permitted himself one brief glance at the blazing universe that hung all about him: the bright fixed lights that were innumerable suns against an eternal blackness, and the luminous dust in between that was even farther-flung. Confusion and chaos seemed to dwell here; if a man gazed too long, he could quietly go mad. But even more insane, he anticipated, would be the thick, writhing nothingness of hyperspace.
Lance Cooper made one final check of all the ship's operating components; then crossed his fingers and cut in the hype-drive.
Instantly, his teeth crashed together and clenched; his strapped-in body was jerked back in its cushioned seat; sweat beaded his brow. A thousand needles prickling his skin couldn't have been worse. He had been told once that the switching-out from this known universe into an unknown one would feel just like a ten-thousand volt jolt in an old-fashioned electric chair; and now he could believe it. Every cell in his body had begun tingling; his stomach pitched under a racking nausea; and an involuntary trickle of saliva dripped from his mouth the moment he got his jaws working again.
But Lance fought the nausea, fought the sickness, and gradually as his flesh accommodated to the change, he felt better.
It was then that the most disturbing phenomenon of all took place. He felt for a moment as if he had been split into two persons. No, four persons, eight, sixteen, an infinity of other selves. They were all beside him, in him and out of him. His eyes ached. He shut them.
When he opened them again, everything was almost back to normal. The other selves had vanished. Only the constant throbbing vibration of the ship remained; yet it was a discomfort that had to be endured for four solid straight weeks now. There was no other means known, by which a man-made vessel could travel faster than light.
Funny about that four weeks, too, thought Lance. All distances in hyperspace were the same, no matter where you wished to go; it required no more than fourteen days and no less, regardless of whether you jumped one light-year or fifty. Lance had always understood there were equations on file at HQ, which explained the paradox. But not being a math expert, he had never missed not being allowed to see them.
He flicked a switch and opened up his viewports again. The starry universe had vanished. The Cosmos XII was riding through a gray void. Alone and--
No, it wasn't alone!
Again, Lance's vision suffered a wrenching sickness. Out there in the colorless vacuum, hundreds of replicas of the Cosmos XII rode along beside him, above him, below him, stretched out in all directions.
There had been nothing in the manuals about this.
Lance stared at the meaningless phenomenon for a long time despite the fact it made his brain ill. At last, he decided it was harmless, whatever was causing it. He shook his head slowly and closed the ports down. He hoped Groombridge 34 would be less taxing.
* * * * *
The system was.
After the ship reverted to normal space in the vicinity of Groombridge 34, Lance hovered about it exactly twelve hours, following all the instructions in his manual to the letter. He started up the cameras and other recording instruments. All went well, there were no incidents, no vessels disturbed him; though had the two components of the binary been at periastron, it would have simplified the work with the position micrometer. If anything else of interest had been detected, it would have to be deciphered from the film and tapes later. You can get as close as four billion miles to an Earth-sized planet in space--and it'll still show up fainter than a fourteenth magnitude star.
Somewhere in the galaxy, Lance supposed, there must be other races building spaceships and guiding them from sun to sun. But thus far, the scout ships from Terra--for all their magnified caution--had never run into signs of any.
The old veteran hype-pilots had the best philosophy after all. Earth was the choicest hunk of mud you were going to find. Enjoy it, brethren.
Well, he would certainly live it up when he got back, Lance swore. He would have his wedding; import Casey from the Club to spike the punch; and, perhaps after he'd gotten in his required number of scout-missions, he might even settle for a chair-borne exec's billet, himself.
Exactly twenty-eight days and twelve hours from the time of his departure from Earth, Lance Cooper was back home again. The Cosmos XII re-materialized out of hyperspace in the neighborhood of the Solar System with its fuel tanks scarcely a third depleted, but its pilot a drained man. Lance, truthfully, not only felt weary and torpid, but a great deal disappointed.
He contacted Traffic, asked for and got a landing trajectory. A few hours later, he had coasted home and the trip was over.
He scrambled down out of the ship, hungry for Carolyn.
The base hadn't changed any in a month, that he could see. A couple of new floodlights put in, perhaps. Some brass were emerging from the control bunker. Colonel Sagen, several others. He recognized them all. Two were SSP's--Space Service Police.
* * * * *
When the colonel got close, Lance tossed off a salute and an insouciant grin: "Well, the Prodigal made it back home, sir. Hope that pessimistic daughter of yours is stashed around somewhere. Otherwise--"
"Otherwise, what?" returned the colonel, unsmiling.
"Why I'm liable to go busting right through that fence," said Lance. "And say, if anybody's worrying about the Cosmos XII, she flew like a dream, colonel. Matter of fact, she--"
Colonel Sagen's jaws snapped together. Wheeling, he barked at the two SSP's: "Spacemen, arrest this officer! Immediately!"
Lance couldn't believe his ears.
"Hey, wait a minute!" he protested. "What have I done?"
Nobody answered. Not at first.
"Well?" Lance asked again, a little more uneasy this time.
"I have no daughter, major," Hard-Head Sagen growled, standing with his legs braced apart and his ramrod shoulders looking businesslike. "I never have had."
The space cops sprang forward. One drew a pistol, held it on the returned pilot, while the other quickly moved behind Lance and pinioned his arms back.
"Is this a joke, colonel?" Lance demanded, struggling. "If it is, I don't appreciate it. You know you've got a daughter, and I'm going to marry her!"
The colonel's jaws clamped tight; and he shook his head from side to side, as if he were dealing with a person suddenly out of his mind. Then he acted.
"Put this man under close confinement," he ordered Lance's guards. "Allow no visitors of any kind." The colonel's tone was harsh and worried. "I've got to buck this matter to HQ. We can't have it blow up right now, God knows."
The space police nudged Lance. "All right, major. Let's go."
Lance's anger seethed to a boil. Hunching his shoulders, he rammed back against the guard holding him, sending him tumbling. What was inside his mind to do if he managed an escape, he couldn't have told. He only knew he had to get away. The colonel had flipped.
And where, by the way, was Carolyn? It seemed impossible she could be in on it, too.
He stood free for a moment, watching warily.
"Hold him!" shouted Colonel Sagen. "Don't let him run loose."
"We got gas pills, colonel," suggested the space cop Lance had bowled over. The man was rising to his feet.
"Use them."
Lance started to run. Over his shoulder, he saw the guard reach inside a small pocket in his webbed pistol belt. The man gestured to the others to duck back out of harm's way. Then, his throwing arm reared back and sent a pellet sailing in a high arc. It landed at Lance's feet and burst instantly. Yellowish gas billowed out. Its acrid fumes penetrated Lance's throat and nostrils. He began coughing. Then, all the fight suddenly ebbed from him. His knees buckled. He was stumbling, falling. The sky reeled.
And very indistinctly, from far away, came the colonel's voice, barking: "Put him in the brig until he recovers. I repeat, let nobody see him. And another thing--I declare everything that's happened here today classified information. If a single word leaks out, I'll have every man-jack among you placed in solitary and held for court-martial."
Then, Lance knew nothing more.
* * * * *
When at last he recovered consciousness and was able to sit up in a kind of groggy stupor, Lance found himself, for the first time in fifteen service-devoted years, on the inside of a guardhouse looking out.
With sardonic melancholy, he recalled times on his O.D. and O.G. tours when he had inspected various prison areas, peered into the cells, and often felt mildly sorry for some poor spaceman doing time for some minor infraction. There had never been very many offenders. Discipline on space bases was not a pressing problem: the corps was an elite branch and intransigent candidates were weeded out quick.
Well, now he was a prisoner, himself. He, Lance Cooper, Major, Space Service, stood behind bars. And no matter how hard his face pressed against those bars, he could only see as far as the corridor extended in either direction.
It wasn't far enough.
Nor would anybody talk to him. He couldn't even get the time of day.
Not since his probation as a plebe, had he consorted with such a bunch of "hush-mouths." Had he no rights as a commissioned officer and a world citizen? He still didn't know why he was incarcerated, or what regulation he had broken.
But that wasn't his most nagging worry.
What preyed on his mind most was Carolyn.
Where was she?
Where? Where? WHERE?
He could have lowered his head and pounded it to a pulp against the wall, in his rage and frustration at being confined. But banging his brains out wouldn't help. Besides, he was going to stand deeply in need of his gray matter, if he hoped to get out of this one.
At evening time, a guardhouse trusty brought him his supper on a tray. Also, the man tossed him half a pack of cigarettes when Lance sought to bum just one. But when the pilot started pitching questions back, the trusty looked scared and unhappy and quickly limped away.
The night dragged on, as unending seemingly as one of Luna's two-week darkouts. Lance smoked, paced the cell from wall to wall, occasionally plopped down on his cot and went over everything that had happened, trying to find some pattern to it.
But there was no pattern.
Next morning, he splashed up and shaved beard away from a tired, red-eyed face in the mirror. Then, he waited. No one came.
Finally, at noon a new officer checked in for duty at the guardhouse. Lance recognized him as a young ordinance captain he'd met before. He called out to the man. The officer, striding down the hallway, wheeled at the sound of his name and came back to the cell. His eyes bugged slightly, when he saw Lance: "Holy smoke, major! What've they got you in for?"
"Search me." Lance was overjoyed to find someone, at last, who didn't dummy up. "I thought maybe you might have a notion."
"I just came on duty. But if there's a charge sheet lying around, I might dig up something from it."
"Would you try?"
The captain held up two fingers and grinned. "No sweat."
* * * * *
Lance waited some more.
The captain did not come back, however, until several hours later. After Lance's evening meal, in fact. His face bore a puzzled frown.
Lance stood at his cell door, gripping the bars. "Well?"
"I checked. Seems the brass are holding you for observation until some headshrinker gets in from HQ. A specialist in hyperspace medicine."
"Then, how come I'm not in a regular hospital? Why the jailhouse?"
"Beats me, major. I can tell you this, though. You're not the first hype-pilot who's been dragged in here screaming."
"But I wasn't screaming! I was perfectly calm and collected, when I climbed down out of my ship. All I did was ask about Carolyn."
"About who?"
"Carolyn Sagen. Old Hard-Head's daughter." Lance felt a sinking feeling. He stopped, cocked a wary eye at the other officer. "Don't look at me that way, man."
The captain had been staring hard at Lance. Now, he began shaking his head back and forth, slowly and sadly.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Lance asked.
"It means Colonel Sagen doesn't have a daughter."
Lance snorted. "Don't tell me that. I'm engaged to her."
"Sorry, major. I've been around the colonel and his wife since I was a kid. He got me the appointment to the Academy. They've never had any children of their own."
"Why, you--" Lance reached through the bars and grabbed the captain by his shirt collar, jerking him against the bars. "It's a lie! A conspiracy! Maybe you think I'm nuts. But I'm not!" He commenced pummeling the captain with his free fist. Then he thought of something better. He snatched the captain's gun from his holster and leveled it.
"I'm getting out of here," Lance announced. "Open up this door--or take the consequences!"
The captain, his face ashy white, submitted and unlocked the cell door. Lance stepped out, got behind the officer, and prodded him into the cell. Tearing a sheet into strips, he tied the man to the cot and gagged him. It took a very short time.
Then, he softly padded down the hallway. He caught the sergeant of the guard napping in his chair. In a moment, the sergeant, too, was trussed up, gagged, and whisked into a spare cell. Lance then tucked the captain's pistol inside his shirt and ventured outside.
It was a moonlit night. A patrol jeep was parked on the drive, begging to be commandeered. Lance hopped in. There was something he had to find out for himself, and only one way to do it: Go to the place where they kept the answers.
Wheeling the jeep along the military street fast as he dared, Lance headed for the base housing area. Colonel Sagen's trim two-story brick residence was where he hoped to pay a call. He knew the route by heart. He'd been a guest there often enough.
The colonel's driveway was empty of cars, he was happy to notice, when he reached the house. He parked, sprinted up to the porch, and knocked on the door.
Presently, footsteps sounded inside and the door opened a few inches. But it was not Carolyn whom Lance saw peeping out at him. It was another woman, older. He recognized Mrs. Sagen.
Lance was blunt. "I've got to see Carolyn, and I haven't much time. You'd better let me in."
An apprehensive, almost shocked expression briefly flitted across the face of Carolyn's mother. It was as if she had never set eyes on Lance Cooper before. Even the gold oak leaves on his shoulders seemed to reassure her but slightly. She kept the door chain in place between them.
"I'm sorry, major. I'm not sure that I understand you."
"Don't malarky me, please. You know who I am and who I want. Carolyn, your daughter."
"Oh," said Mrs. Sagen. It was said in a way that revealed nothing.
"Look," said Lance, impatiently. "You do have a daughter. I've dated her. So, all right," he waved his hands, "she's been spirited away for some reason. I still think I've got a right to know why."
"Oh, my!" said Mrs. Sagen, and her hand flew to her face. "You must be that scout-ship pilot who showed up yesterday. The one who--"
"Yeh, the one everybody figures for psycho. But I'm not, Mrs. Sagen. You know I'm not." Lance took a deep breath. "Can I come in? I just want some facts. After all, this crazy farce can't go on forever."
The colonel's wife still looked doubtful, but Lance Cooper had a way of pressing a point hard when his interests were at stake. He began talking rapidly and convincingly.
He got in.
* * * * *
The light indoors was better. Lance's eyes squinted, as they adjusted from the gloom of the porch. Somehow, Mrs. Sagen didn't look quite as he remembered. Her hair was much darker now; he was sure of that. Maybe she had dyed it. Yet her features were certainly harder and bonier. More like a replica of her husband's. And her breath smelled alcoholic. Could a mere month have made that much difference?
The house had been refurnished too, Lance noticed. The living-room decor was more severe and functional. And the pictures on the wall were garish. Not Mrs. Sagen's type, at all.
Hey, wait a minute! he told himself; speaking of pictures--his glance skipped to the far corner of the room. A triptych of photos of Carolyn had always been on display on the mantelpiece. They would prove that--
Lance's jaw dropped.
The photos had been removed.
"Can I get you anything?" Mrs. Sagen inquired. A little nervously, Lance thought. "A cup of coffee?"
"No, thanks. I'd rather hear about Carolyn."
"Coffee won't take a minute. I was just making some fresh in the kitchen."
Lance shrugged. "Well, O.K., if you've already got it ready."
Mrs. Sagen's mouth managed a fleeting smile; then she disappeared through a swinging door. Lance sat down in a wrought-iron chair. Finding it not comfortable, he sprang back to his feet and paced the floor. There sure was something wrong about the colonel's house. Something very oddly wrong. But he couldn't quite put his finger on it.
Suddenly, his quickened hearing caught the faint murmur of a human voice. Was it Carolyn? The talk seemed to be issuing from the kitchen--where her mother had gone. Lance tiptoed across the room, pushed the door slightly open.
Mrs. Sagen was on the phone. Her voice was excited; she was obviously straining to keep it at a low level. "I'm telling you, he's here! Right in our living room. And he insists I know somebody named Carolyn ... Yes, that's right. But do hurry ... Please. He's acting much odder than the others did."
Lance had eavesdropped enough. He turned away, glided rapidly out the front door and into the night.
Where should he go next? The jeep would serve to hustle him around the base for a while--but eventually he would be chased down and recaptured. And as for crashing any of the exit gates and thus attaining to greater freedom, he knew they would all be barricaded and heavily manned by now.
Lance was still burning over Mrs. Sagen's double-cross. Did he want coffee? she had asked. Coffee! his mind repeated, disgusted. What he needed was something stronger. A good stiff drink.
That was it! The Officers Club. Casey would be on duty at this hour. Lance would ask him to mix him a double for old times' sake. Then, he'd meekly surrender and quietly go crazy in his cell, until the headshrinker came and confirmed it for real.
* * * * *
The pilot got back in the jeep and drove on. When he reached the Club, he wheeled the vehicle around to a rear entrance where bushes made the grounds shadier. Parking, he got out, strolled into the building as sneakily as if he'd been an inspector-general paying a surprise call from out of Space Service Headquarters.
Few officers lounged about. Most were at tables and engrossed in their own imbibing. Lance strode up to the bar, perched himself on a high stool. Casey, whose hair was red as a Martian desert, was rinsing glasses. He stopped at his task and came over, wiping the counter with a wet towel. "What'll it be, major?"
"One of your Specials, Casey, my friend."
"Beg pardon?"
"You know--one of your Casey Specials. Where you start off with half a glass of Irish whisky, add a dash or two of absinthe, a drop of--"
"I don't stock no absinthe, major." Casey's freckled face was abruptly hostile. "You know that. It's against regulations."
Lance fought down a tremor. Everybody was in on it. Everybody. He compromised for a minute: "Give me a slug of Teacher's on the rocks, then."
Casey measured out the drink for him.
Lance downed it. His hand gripped the edge of the bar. "Casey, do you know me?"
He watched Casey study him. The thick reddish eyebrows knit. "It's a pretty big base, major. Lots of faces. Sometimes, I kind of forget the names."
Lance's blood pressure gave a spurt. "I'm Major Lance Cooper! Hell, you've rung up my chits often enough!"
And his mind added: How could you forget?
"Major." Casey's eyes narrowed, while the uneasy suspicion in them grew. "We don't have no chit system at this club."
Lance's head felt like it would explode. He could take no more.
"You're lying!" he shouted. His big hands reached over the mahogany counter and shook the bartender like a squawk-box that had refused to function properly. "Tell me you're lying in your teeth. If you don't, I'll push them down your throat--"
Suddenly, Lance sensed people behind him. A firm hand clamped down heavily on his shoulder.
The pilot stretched his neck around. What now? His hands did not relax their murderous grip on his victim.
The arresting party had entered the club quietly. Now, they were ganged up around him: Colonel Sagen, his two aides, a fourth man Lance recognized as Major Carmody, the base legal officer--and a fifth man too, who wore the insignia of the Space Surgeon-General's Department. A psychiatrist.
"Better come peacefully, major," rasped Colonel Sagen. "You've been 'cleared' for an explanation--and if you're smart, you'll listen to the spiel and play ball."
The way it was said made Lance feel he could trust the Old Man for that long. Anyhow, what choice did he have?
"It's about time," Lance sighed. He set Casey down, to the latter's greatly exhaled relief. "Only how come all the suspense?"
"It was very necessary," broke in Major Carmody.
"Was it? Well, you had me about to crack--if that was your object. Now then, would any of you mind easing my worries about Carolyn. She's O.K., isn't she?"
His glance shifted from one to the other.
"Isn't she?"
Nobody would reply--neither Colonel Sagen, nor any of the officers bunched-up around him.
Sweat suddenly broke out on Lance's brow. The chilly feeling went through him that if and when an answer was provided him, he wasn't particularly going to like it.
Not in the slightest.
* * * * *
Shortly afterwards, Lance was driven across the base by his captors and escorted into his commanding officer's private office. The two aides were dismissed, but the psychiatrist-officer, who also wore eagles on his shoulders, and Major Carmody remained.
Colonel Sagen seated himself behind his desk.
"Major," he began, clearing his throat, "you imagine me to have a daughter. You're positive of it. You even visualize her so well, that you remember something about how you were going to marry her."
"You're not going to talk me out of anything on that score," Lance shot back.
"Perhaps, we don't intend to. Colonel Nordsen, here," Sagen indicated the psychiatrist, "has flown in from HQ to chat with you. He can explain the technical aspects of the phenomenon that has thrown you better than I can. I'd advise you to listen to him. He's just what you need."
"Just what I need? What else do you intend to do? Hypnotize me, so you can erase all my past?"
The colonel scowled. "Look here, major. You co-operate and learn to keep your mouth shut, we may be able to restore you to duty. But if not ... well, what happens then will be entirely up to Nordsen. It could mean a padded cell. The development of hyperspace exploration has to go on, whatever happens to you."
"I'll tell you one thing to your face, colonel," Lance replied, hotly. "I'm not off my rocker."
"No one has maintained you were," broke in Colonel Nordsen. "But Colonel Sagen had to throw a curtain around you fast."
"Why?"
Neither officer answered.
Finally, Colonel Sagen said, "I think you'd better continue with him, Colonel Nordsen."
Nordsen was a youthful-looking man for his rank, yet prematurely balding. He wore thick-shelled glasses.
"Major Cooper," Nordsen began, "let's go back to when you put the Cosmos XII through its first jump through hyperspace. How well do you recall your experience?"
"I'll never forget it. You Earthbound kiwis should try it sometime."
"Did you experience a feeling ... perhaps, rather uncanny ... that the whole thing had happened to you before? What psychologists call the sense of déjà vu?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Perhaps some other type of phenomenon was manifested? A feeling you'd been split in half, maybe."
"That did happen."
"Describe it."
"It was more than just being split in half. I felt like I was suddenly hundreds of selves. I could see other replicas of 'me' all around."
Nordsen nodded, thoughtfully. "That was what we call the 'Infinite Fission' syndrome. All those other 'you's' were personality matrices of yourself in alternate worlds. Did you notice anything else?"
Lance nodded, grudgingly.
* * * * *
"What?"
"Look, colonel. If I answer your questions, will you answer mine?"
"Any reasonable ones, yes. That's what we're here for."
"Well, there was the disturbing thing about the Cosmos XII, itself. I saw images of the ship riding along beside me, out there in the hype. Where nothing material could possibly exist. Where not even light could reflect back, or any other wave propagation." Lance shook his head, recalling the experience. "What could have caused a hallucination like that?"
"It was no hallucination, Lance. It was real and has happened before. We can rest you easy on that point."
Colonel Nordsen removed tobacco from a pouch, stuffed his pipe, lit up. Bluish smoke formed a halo about him.
"Lance, the Space Service has been sending ships through hyperspace for nearly two years now. Only recently did anybody notice something was seriously wrong with the pilots who came back. Up until then ... oh, a pilot might act a little queer for a day or two. But who wouldn't, cooped up alone in a steel projectile for four weeks? We thought very little of it."
"Uh huh," was Lance Cooper's only comment.
Nordsen transferred his pipe to his hand. "But eventually, even the Space Service gets around to putting two and two together on the slipstick. The incidents kept piling up. A pilot comes back from Epsilon Eridani, for example, and insists on giving everybody left-handed salutes. Another has taken a scout ship to 61 Cygni. He insists at the Officers Club that Colonel Sagen here has a nickname of 'Old Hard-Head'. Nobody else on the base is aware of any such thing. Then, still another pilot--"
"Wait a minute!" Lance interrupted. "Hasn't he?"
"Hasn't what? I don't follow you."
"Colonel Sagen. Hasn't he got that nickname? I mean, it was a term of respect and liking, of course. But--"
"No," said Nordsen.
"No?" Lance echoed, disbelieving. "Since when?"
"Not since ever, major. Not on this particular track."
"Colonel Nordsen, you're losing me."
"Patience, please. I was about to tell you that still another pilot lands on our base, and he wears a blue tie. Claims the Space Service has always worn blue ties."
"I take it back," said Lance. "I'm a pilot and all pilots are slowly going nuts." Then, it occurred to him to evince more interest or they might ship him back to the brig sooner than expected. "A blue tie, huh?"
"And blue suede chukkas, to match," Colonel Sagen's hoarse voice broke in. "Most unmilitary-looking uniform I ever saw on a space officer."
Colonel Nordsen, the psychiatrist, set his pipe aside. "Gradually, we began building up a file of such weird discrepancies. Another pilot landed wearing a handle-bar mustache. He couldn't possibly have grown so much lip-hair in a month. Yet, the man claimed he'd sported the mustache for years; and that every officer in his squadron was decked out with one, too."
* * * * *
"Tell me just one thing," Lance pleaded. His nerves were gradually getting more on edge. "What has all this got to do with Carolyn Sagen? Why is she being kept from me?"
Nordsen's eyebrows met, evincing a little displeasure. "Don't you get the drift, major? I've been trying to accomplish two things at the same time. Cushion a shock for you--and explain why what has happened has happened. There is no Carolyn Sagen. The colonel and his wife have always been childless."
Lance got belligerent. "Say that again!"
"There is no Carolyn Sagen here."
"What d'you mean, when you say 'here'?"
Nordsen took off his shell-rimmed glasses, wiped them, restored them to his boyish face. "I would advise you to brace yourself. By 'here,' I mean on this particular time-track."
Lance stared at him.
"Doesn't the word have any significance for you?" Nordsen asked.
"Time-track? Sure, I've heard of the concept before. It's a theory that parallel worlds branch off when ... hey!" Lance's tone rose to a shout. "You're not trying to imply that ... that I'm on a diff--?"
"That's right. We're trying to tell you that you have obviously landed in another time-track. One that is parallel to--but just a slight bit different from the one you formerly knew. To you, we seem to be the same officers as in that world; but of course, we're not. It isn't the same universe. Hyperspace is tricky stuff, as our men are finding out. You've just got bounced around by one of the trickiest things connected with it."
Lance groaned. "Now, I'm told!"
"I'm sorry. It's nothing new, only the information is classified top-secret in our world; and evidently in yours, too. It has to be withheld from hype-trainees, otherwise they might deliberately flunk their course. We're running pilot classes here on our track, too. We have to keep them filled."
Lance was stunned. He hardly knew what he should say or do next.
Finally, he put forth a faltering question: "Is there any way I can get back to Home Base? My home base?"
All three officers in the room shook their heads in unison.
"You might as well look for a pebble in the beach," said Nordsen. He elucidated: "As a matter of fact, this is Home Base for you. The differences between one track and another are not usually too great; the resemblances are many. Sometimes even, the returned pilot accommodates himself to the new time-track without suspecting in the slightest what's happened to him."
"And in those cases, you seldom bother to enlighten him, I suppose."
"Naturally not. Security frowns on it."
"But in my case, you couldn't cover up."
"Your case manifests a much more serious slippage. Your path, evidently, warped to a track several million or billion worlds further over than anybody from your world had previously experienced. Consequently, your luck has really been unfortunate. You've materialized out of hyperspace into a universe where someone you apparently knew quite closely simply was never born."
"But Carolyn did exist before ... where I was? I'm not dreaming."
"No. Both our worlds are equally real."
* * * * *
Lance, though he felt the truth slowly and inexorably sink in, still could not quite grasp all its implications. He turned his numbed face to the other two officers in the room. Colonel Sagen and Major Carmody inclined their heads.
For one despairing moment, Lance felt almost like hurling himself through the window. Then, he straightened up. His mouth compressed into a thin line. "If I must face the facts, I must. But," his tone edged off into irony, "it sure isn't easy. You'll have to give me time."
Colonel Nordsen stood up, held out his hand. "I'm sorry, major, believe me. This is a hard blow to take and I wouldn't care to be on the receiving end, myself. But you'll adjust. If you like, I'll recommend you for convalescent leave. You understand, of course," the psychiatrist went on, "that we expect you to keep tight-lipped. Our hype-classes are still too small. We need a lot of sharp men, and they have to be volunteers. Right, Colonel Sagen?"
"Right."
Lance dropped the proffered hand. "I get it. Let the word get around how hyperspace messes you up, all your bright young jets will bug out on it. That's your main worry, isn't it? Not what happens to me."
"Frankly, yes," Nordsen acknowledged, without blinking. "But the Space Service is also concerned about individuals. Don't worry now, major. We'll look after you."
"Don't bother!" An uncontrolled bitterness crept into Lance's reply. "Far as I'm concerned, the Space Service can go to hell. What reason have I got to stay in it? You've conned me out of all that meant anything in my life."
Nobody said a word.
Lance rose to his feet, unsteadily. His sardonic glance swept over them. "I suppose it's back to the guardhouse for me now, huh? Well, I won't be sorry to go. I'll find better company. And I refuse your bribe of special leave-time."
Colonel Nordsen seemed unaffected. "You're making a mistake," he said, calmly.
"Am I?"
"Major, we're offering you a chance to get adjusted and assimilated. Take it or leave it. We can hold you in the brig until you see reason. But you're a good man. We need you."
"For what? More flights through that hyperspace muck?"
"If you can pass our mental stability tests, yes."
"And if not?"
"You'll be grounded."
Lance made a sudden decision.
"I want to go up right now."
"What?"
* * * * *
"You heard me. I want to go up in the Cosmos XII right now, tests or no tests. Ground me--and I'll never have a chance again. Don't you think I'm hep to that?"
"We'll see that you're not grounded," broke in Colonel Sagen, from behind his desk.
But Lance didn't believe him.
"Don't try to kid me, colonel," he snapped out. "You write me out flight orders for the Cosmos XII, or I'll blab everything I know. You can't hang me, you can't tear my tongue out--and I know I'll bust out of your guardhouse one way or another! You'll see! And then, how will you fill up your precious training classes? Then, how will you get new chumps to pilot your ships to the stars? The stars! Ha, ha! That's the biggest joke of all!"
Colonel Sagen began to splutter. Lance, watching him carefully, decided there wasn't much resemblance between the old boy and the fine Colonel Sagen he'd known in his own world. Maybe it'd been having the softening influence of normal family life and a growing daughter that had made old Hard-Head human.
"You'll never get away with this," Sagen warned. "We're three against one."
"Won't I?" Lance's hand darted inside his shirt. "Maybe this'll equalize us." He brought out the pistol he'd taken off the captain in the guardhouse. Sagen, Nordsen, and Carmody backed off from it.
"The Cosmos XII is still two-thirds fueled," Lance said. "And well-stocked on provisions. Besides, I'm a light eater in hyperspace--as who isn't? I intend to take that ship out again, and you're going to help me, gentlemen."
Lance flicked off the safety and waved the gun back and forth, to demonstrate what he meant.
* * * * *
It worked.
Lance got his ship, using Colonel Sagen as both shield and go-between after he had first tied up the other two officers in a closet. He kept a close watch, of course, for the SSP's and their gas pellets; but apparently an alarm was not raised soon enough for the base police to hurl into action.
After having the colonel authorize a space clearance for him by contacting Traffic directly over the ship's mike, Lance finally released him.
The colonel scooted down the ladder. Lance gave him time to clear the pad, but little more; then he went to work pushing buttons on the manual desk. The Cosmos XII blasted loose from her moorings and soared aloft into space.
At five thousand miles above Earth's surface, Lance re-checked his tapes. Groombridge 34 was the only possible destination the autopilot could take him to. Somehow, he didn't mind taking one more look at the double-star system. He cut into hyperspace as quickly as he dared; then sat back and relaxed. That is, as much as any man could in hype.
When he reached Groombridge 34, all Lance did was pop out into normal space long enough to assure himself he had reached the proper checkpoint for turning back. The tapes were in good order, and there had been no hitches. Grunting, he threw in the switch-over and once more found himself plowing through hyperspace. Only this time, he was homeward bound.
If he were lucky, just real lucky, he told himself, there might be a Carolyn Sagen alive and waiting for him in whatever time-track he wound up in this time.
At last, he materialized again in the Solar System. Or some Solar System, anyhow. As far as he could tell, all the planets looked unchanged. It was just four weeks to the day, since his escape from World Two. This would be World Three. He had been gone eight weeks and two days from World One.
Lance cut the ecliptic at a different angle than before, and Terra was farther along in her journey around Sol. He needed a new landing trajectory. His eye swept his panel, to see if anything had been preset. There was no green flashing on the deck, where there should have been green.
Oh, well. There could have been cruisers waiting in space, too, to pot him with ship-to-ship missiles. He'd taken one chance, he could take another.
Lance opened a switch and called Base Traffic's frequency. "This is the Cosmos XII, Major Lance Cooper piloting. Just broke out of hype. Can you read me?"
He repeated the message for several minutes.
Finally, he got an answer. A startled voice whipped back at him through crackling static: "Cosmos XII, this is Traffic. Who did you say you were up there?"
* * * * *
Lance hardly knew whether he felt more like laughing or crying. He was fairly close to home, anyhow. They did have space traffic here. And being pretty much of an optimist, he also decided that it was a time-track where he had been known. Only being so long overdue, he had probably been given up for lost.
On this premise, he could visualize all the consternation and excitement now in progress downstairs; the personnel were likely falling all over each other in the stampede to pass the word around.
"I'm Major Lance Cooper," he announced over the mike.
There was a long pause.
"Repeat that, please."
"This is Lance Cooper, Major, Space Service. I'm up here in the Cosmos XII."
"B-b-but you can't be."
"Who says I can't. Say, what's the matter with you monkeys? I want to come in."
Another voice took over on the channel. "The lieutenant's right. You actually do sound like Cooper, whoever you are!"
Lance laughed openly. "I've lived with him all my life, why shouldn't I? You think I'm a ghost?"
"Well ... no. We know you're real. We're getting a blip from you. Only thing is--"
"Let's talk about it when I get down," Lance interrupted. "I need a program fast. Get those G.S. computers working and read me an orbit."
"W-will do."
"And one more thing: Is Colonel Sagen around?"
"Not today, major. He had to fly to Luna."
"How about his daughter?"
"Who?"
Oh, no! Lance felt his heart almost stop. Had the big try been for nothing? He chanced a repeat.
"His daughter. Carolyn Sagen."
This time, he got results.
"Oh! You mean Hard-Head's daughter. The one who ... say, wasn't she all set to marry you?"
"You bet your last commendation ribbon she was. And she's going to! Hey!" Lance shouted. "Anything wrong with her? She's not sick or--"
The voice of the first operator at Traffic came back on. "The captain had to take off. No sir, major. She's not sick. We just don't know how she's gonna take this, is all."
"With bells on, Junior. Wedding bells! Get her out to meet me when I land, will you? And snap it up on that trajectory."
Again, the traffic crackled in Lance's ear. There seemed to be a great deal of excitement going on down there. And then the great night rim of Earth swung under him, blocking out further radio communication.
Presently, a relayed beam from Luna came in. The Luna spaceport read him a series of figures to punch into his autopilot. The new orbit would edge him in close enough to Terra, that he could pick up an assist from the G.A. system of his home base.
Lance rubbed his hands together in his joy. He was cooking on all burners, now. At last.
* * * * *
Six hours later, the Cosmos XII settled down in her landing cradle. Major Lance Cooper kicked open the air-lock door and began climbing down to solid ground.
It was just barely twilight. Ordinarily, there would have been long purplish shadows at the far ends of the field; but now the entire space base was flooded with lights. Were the beacons sweeping back and forth just to welcome him? It hardly seemed possible. Yet, the apron itself, was swarming with people. Here they came now! A whole mob racing towards him, and the noise of their swelling shouts preceded them, rolling forward like the breakers upon a shore.
Oh, oh! What was that in the far corner of the field? A big pile of crumpled metal, already rusted and ready for the bulldozers. Some poor devil had crashed his hype-ship. Lance wondered vaguely which of his buddies it had been. Then he shut it out of his mind.
A jeep swung out ahead of the advancing crowd and came speeding down the concrete. Brakes squealed; rubber tires bit in hard, and the vehicle plunged to a halt near him. Lance recognized Major Carmody in the driver's seat. Or another Major Carmody. What difference did it make? None, now that he was able to identify so very well the other figure in the jeep--a slight blond figure in a trench coat seated next to Carmody.
Carolyn!
He saw her get out. He saw her commence walking towards him. But too slowly, he thought. And he was too paralyzed to move.
"Lance?" she called to him. "Is it you? Is it really you, darling?"
The girl's step almost faltered. Major Carmody's hand reached out, steadied her.
Something was wrong again. But what? He could not guess.
Lance came out of his paralysis. He began running towards her.
And in a moment, they were in each other's arms without caring why or how: Lance Cooper and the girl he loved. Kissing, hugging, unable to believe for a moment in each other's reality.
Then, Carolyn had to have breath and she drew apart for a moment. Then, she kissed him again. And Lance, for the first time, listened and made sense out of the welter of hysterical sobbing words that were pouring forth:
"Darling, darling, darling Lance! I cried so much, and now it's all over. I don't care if you're not real. I love you, I love you! I don't care if you are somebody from another time-track like Major Carmody says! You're my Lance and you belong to me. It's you I love and want now; no matter how shameless I sound!... Yes, darling, it's you I want, not that poor broken thing we buried two months ago. Not the--"
Lance's feeling of impending horror was great, but not so great that he shrank from the question that now rose and beat and beat at his brain. The overwhelming question that had to be asked.
"Carolyn!" He held her so tight he thought for a moment he'd cracked her ribs. His half-shook gaze penetrated her retreating eyes, forcing her to meet him.
"Carolyn! What do you mean--it's me you want now, not that poor broken thing you buried? Tell me. TELL ME!"
"Don't you know, darling Lance? When you took off that night eight weeks ago, that night I kissed you good-by, your ship ... oh don't you comprehend?... Your ship, it--"
"Tell me, Carolyn!"
"Your ship, Lance, that's it over there--the wreckage of it! The Cosmos XII crashed on take-off that night, Lance. You were killed out-right. We buried you two days later."
THE END
THE BIG TOMORROW
BY PAUL LOHRMAN
There are certain rare individuals in this world who seem bereft of all common sense. These are the people who set their eyes upon an objective and immediately all intelligence, logic, good advice, unsolvable problems, and insurmountable obstacles go completely by the boards. The characters we refer to are obviously just plain stupid. What they want to do, just can't be done. The objectives they have in mind are unachievable and anyone with an ounce of brains can tell them so and give them good reasons. They are usually pretty sad cases and often land in the funny house. But then again, some of them go out and discover new worlds.
He hadn't gotten any work done that morning. He'd spent most of the time pacing the floor of his small back office, and the rest of it at the window--hands clasped behind his somewhat bowed back--staring up into the cloudless sky.
At ten-forty, the intercom buzzed. He snapped the switch.
"Yes?"
"I've got those figures, Mr. Lake. We have nine--"
"Maybe you'd better come in and tell me personally, Lucy."
"All right, Mr. Lake."
The intercom snapped off and a few moments later a girl entered the office--if the prim little wisp that was Lucy Crane could be so generously classified.
Joshua Lake stared at the elongated bun of black hair on the top of her head as she came toward his desk. There was an odd streak of rich imagination in Joshua Lake and he always felt Lucy Crane's bun was a symbol of disapproval. "Sit down, Lucy. You use up too much energy."
"I try to do my job, Mr. Lake."
"You do that--and more. What are the figures, Lucy?"
"We're in desperate shape. We have nine thousand, four hundred and twenty dollars in the payroll account. That leaves it over five thousand short. There is only about two thousand in General Disbursements, but that isn't enough to cover invoices due tomorrow. I'm afraid--"
"Don't be afraid, Lucy. That's negative. If we waste our time sitting around shivering, we won't make any progress at all."
"I didn't mean it that way, Mr. Lake. I'm not shivering. I was merely stating that we haven't got enough money."
"Then I'll go to the bank and get some more."
"Of course, Mr. Lake. Is that all?"
"Yes, that's all, Lucy. You run on to lunch."
"You aren't going out?"
"No. I'm not hungry today."
Her bun bobbed in disapproval as she left the office. Joshua Lake stared at the closed door and sighed. Lucy knew exactly how things were. She wasn't one to be fooled. But Joshua hoped the rest of the personnel were not so perceptive. The engineers and the draftsmen particularly. They could all walk out at noon and be working somewhere else by one o'clock, what with the huge current industrial demand.
He walked again to the window; an old man; bone-weary, with the weight of his sixty-odd years bending his shoulders like a brick-carrier's hod.
"Then I'll go to the bank and get some more." He hadn't even fooled himself this time. His chances at the bank were nil. Less than nil. His very presence there could tip the balance of their decision. Loans could be called; the doors locked before nightfall.
At the window, he lowered his eyes from the sky and looked to the gate that led into the horseshoe sweep of low buildings and back to the great, bulking hangar where precious work was being done.
A man and his dream, Lake mused.
He could see only the back of the sign hanging over the gate, but he was quite familiar with the other side. Lake Interstellar Enterprises in bold, brave letters; and in the lower right-hand corner--barely discernible--Joshua Lake--President.
* * * * *
A visitor looking closely at the sign could see that it had been done over--that a discarded legend lay beneath a coat of white paint. The old name of the firm was still faintly visible: Lake and Gorman--Castings and Extrusions.
It wasn't difficult for Joshua to conjure up Lee Gorman's craggy, hostile face. Nor his words. Lee had a voice like gravel being ground to powder. A voice to remember....
"Of course I won't go along with this damn-fool idea of yours! Turn a perfectly sound, entrenched business into a blue-sky factory? You've gone crazy, Joshua."
"But it's feasible, Lee! Entirely feasible. All we need is a little imagination. I've investigated. I've hired the best brains in the world. I have all the necessary preliminary data. A rocket can be built that will take three men to the Moon and bring them back!"
"That's idiocy, Joshua!"
"Don't you believe it can be done?"
"I don't care whether it can be done or not!"
"But open your eyes, man! This is an age of development. An era of movement. We're on the threshold of the big tomorrow, and we can't let it pass us by! We can't let the honor and the glory go to others while we sit on our hands and hoot from the gallery! Come alive, Lee! The world is passing us!"
"I don't want honor and glory. All I want is a sound going business. Suppose we could put a rocket on the Moon and bring it back? Where would that leave us? Broke and famous. And laughed at probably in the bargain."
"Nothing of the kind. We could write our own ticket. We'd control the gateway to the greatest mineral deposits within reach of Man! Think of it, Lee. Use your imagination."
"I won't go along with you, Joshua. That's all there is to it."
More of the same; days of it, and finally: "You can have the customers then, Lee. I'll keep the plant--the physical properties."
"But that's not fair."
"Perhaps not, but it's legal."
"How can I service them--from my basement?"
"I offered you an alternative only a fool would have turned down--"
"That only a fool would accept!"
"--so now I'm going ahead and nothing can stop me. I've got a dream, man--a dream of a big tomorrow. I'm going to make that dream come true."
"Name it right, Joshua. You've got an obsession."
The end of Lake and Gorman....
Joshua turned from the window, then paused and looked again into the sky. The Moon was up, a round, white will-o'-the-wisp in the clear blue afternoon sky. He stared at it and the old feeling of affinity swept over him, stronger than ever. The Moon was, for him, both a goal and a tonic. Sight of its illusive form could always sweep away his doubts; straighten his shoulders.
The intercom buzzed. Joshua went over and snapped it. "Yes?"
"Mr. Coving to see you, sir."
"Send him in."
Rayburn Coving was probably the best rocket-fuel man in the world. He had a little of his sandy hair left, not much, and his forehead was permanently creased from frowning. "I'm afraid that new benzoic derivative is a failure, Chief. It piles up corrosion in the tubes too fast. They'd be clogged halfway through the trip."
One hundred and twenty thousand dollars up the spout. Joshua sighed. "Well, I suppose the chance of success was worth it. The added power in relatively smaller space would have solved so many other problems."
"I'm sorry it failed."
Joshua smiled. "To paraphrase a certain American inventor--we're finding any number of ways you can't go to the Moon. What now, Coving?"
"Back to the old method--and the other problems. None of them are insurmountable, though. A little more time--"
"Yes--a little more time." Joshua grimaced inwardly. He was talking to Coving as though they had years--not as though their time had run out. He was even in debt for Coving's labor; overdrawn on it without enough money to pay.
The moment of weakness--of deep-down weariness--passed. Joshua Lake stiffened as he had stiffened so many times before. As he had stiffened when Zornoff's alloys had flunked out and the first trip to the bank had been made necessary. The first trip to the bank. Joshua smiled wryly. The bank people had been cordial then. Even servile. Later it had been different. Now--
"You were saying, Mr. Lake--?"
"Have you seen Morton lately? What's the latest on the radar relay equipment?"
"No major bugs, I think. It's coming along famously."
"Good!" For two hundred odd thousand it certainly should, Joshua felt. "Let me know how you make out, Coving."
"I will, Chief. I'll get the order in for the new chemicals immediately."
"Eh--oh, yes. Do that. Do that by all means."
Coving left. Joshua Lake put his head against the back rest of the chair and closed his eyes. He dozed, drifting into a haze from weariness. It's been so long--so very long. Seven years--eight--ten. Ten years. Good heavens! Was it possible? It didn't seem that long. Ten years to make a dream succeed.
Or fail.
Joshua slept and again--as in the past--his rest was plagued with visions. The torment of his days took many forms in an alert subconscious too taut to relax. He had seen before him mountains too steep to cross--chasms too deep and wide to bridge. Often, when a great problem was solved, he would look back, nights later, to see the mountain or the chasm from the other side.
Now his vision was different. No mountain before him, but a face--the stern craggy face of an obstacle in his path.
Lee Gorman.
The face was of clay--yet it lived. The eyes were cold, disdainful. And a weird, green creation of Joshua's own mind was sketching Gorman in the numbers, signs, and symbols of a rocket that would never reach the Moon.
Joshua awoke with a start and found Lucy bending over him. "You didn't answer the buzzer, Mr. Lake. I was worried."
"I must have dozed off, Lucy. Sorry."
"I'm going home now--if there's nothing else."
"Nothing else. I'm going home myself. Good night."
Joshua paused beside his car in the parking lot to stare at the lighted windows of the big hangar. The second shift had come on. They would work all night; then, tomorrow, they would line up with the others at the pay window. But there wouldn't be any money. The next night the hangar windows would be dark.
He got into the car and drove home.
Myra was waiting for him. She took his hat. After he kissed her, she said, "Your eyes are red, dear. You've been working much too hard. Shall we have dinner in the patio?"
"That would be nice."
Joshua had little to say during the meal, and Myra was quiet also--adjusting herself, as she had always done, to his mood. Finally, she said, "That will be all, Bertha. Leave the coffee pot."
The maid left. A slight chill was coming in off the desert. Joshua shivered and said, "We're through, Myra."
"Through? I don't understand."
"The Moon trip. I can't swing it. The money's run out. There's no place I can raise another dime."
"But you've worked so hard--and so long! And you are so close to success."
"We've made a lot of progress, but the rocket isn't ready yet. Now it's too late."
They were silent for a time. Then Myra said, "In a way, I'm glad. You should have stopped long ago. You aren't strong enough to stand this pace forever. Now we can go away--get a small place somewhere. That Moon rocket was killing you, Joshua."
Joshua pondered the point. "Killing me? No, I don't think so. I think it has been keeping me alive."
"Don't say that, dear! You make it sound so--so brutal! Year in and year out. Fighting disappointment--failure. Aging before my eyes while I sit here night after night!"
Fighting disappointment--failure. Yes. That was the kind of fight it had been. How many failures? The first big one had come six years before....
"Acceleration, Monsieur, must be achieved in the first two thousand miles of flight. After that, the speed of the ship remains constant. You follow me?" Tardeau, the half-mad French genius had explained it so logically. And Joshua had believed in him. That's where you made your big gamble in a project of this kind. You selected your men and then believed in them. Others dissented, of course. There are always dissenters. And always points that could not be proven or disproven on the drawing boards or in the test pits....
* * * * *
"I follow you, Henri. The booster units will be in three sections."
"Exactly, Msieu. The primary--ah, booster, as you say, breaks free at twelve miles. That one, and the secondary, we control with radar. We touch a button and Voila! they are free!"
"In case of the men in the ship blacking out, I think you said."
"Exactly. But the third will be disengaged from within the ship and she will be free as a bird to fly to your most illusive Moon!"
"And the return?"
"There we have a much lighter ship, Monsieur. The smaller boosters will lift her easily. The return trip will be slower--much slower, but she will return!"
Michael Bernard was the dissenter. "The Frenchman's crazy! Mad as a hatter, Chief."
"You think it won't work, then?"
"Too damn complicated. A dozen units of time and mechanism have to mesh perfectly. The odds are against that happening. After all, you've got to remember, what we're attempting has never been done before."
"But if it did work--?"
"It would be a beauty."
"Better than your idea of a single booster?"
"If it worked--yes. The weight problem would be solved. Five men could ride the rocket. But--"
"Let's try it, Mike. Let's believe in our destiny."
"Okay--you're the boss. But destiny's a hard thing to lay out and analyze on a drawing board."
A man and his dream....
The radar equipment had failed. Burdened with the weight of exhausted booster sections, the rocket curved back into the clutches of gravity.
It crashed on the fringe of the Amazon jungles.
Five Moon pioneers dead. Three uninsured, dependent families. Joshua provided for them, but the critical newspapers overlooked that point. One editorial observed that Joshua Lake would get a rocket to the Moon and back if it took every able-bodied man in the country. The project would have died right there if Joshua had needed money. No bank in the nation would have loaned him a dime. Fortunately he was not yet broke. He started over.
Fortunately?
* * * * *
At times he had wondered. But always, his faith had returned to buoy him up....
Joshua reached out and took Myra's hand. He looked up into the sky. "You may be wrong, my dear. Possibly it's the other way. A man's ambition--" he smiled. "Lee called it an obsession once. A man's dream can keep him alive."
"But why does it have to be so hard? Why can't one of the big corporations help you? They'll profit from your success!"
"At least I had no competition in the fulfillment of my dream."
They were silent for a time; then Myra said, "But now you can rest. We'll go away. We don't need much money. We'll have a garden. You can lie in the sun."
He laughed softly; not with humor; rather from a quiet, new-welling courage. "We're talking as though it were all over--finished, done with. That isn't right."
She glanced at him quickly. "But you just said--"
"I know. But I didn't really mean it that way. We aren't through yet."
"You know where you can raise--more money?"
"I know where it is. I'm going to see Lee Gorman tomorrow."
"Lee Gorman! You aren't serious."
"There's no place else to go."
"You'll be wasting your time, Joshua. He'll--he'll humiliate you."
"He probably will. And I may not get the money. But there's no place else to go."
Tears came into Myra's eyes. "Don't do it, Joshua. Please don't do it."
"It won't be as bad as you think, dear. I guess Lee is entitled to crow a little."
* * * * *
Lee Gorman looked at the intercom on his desk as though it had snapped at him. "Who?" he barked. But there had been no mistake. Gorman sat in puzzled silence for a few moments. Then he said, "All right, show him in."
Joshua Lake entered the office with his hat in one hand and a briefcase in the other. He paused halfway to Gorman's desk. "You haven't changed much, Lee."
"You have," Gorman answered. "You look like the devil."
"I've been working hard." Joshua Lake covered the intervening distance and stood before the desk. Gorman surveyed him coldly--up and down. Joshua looked around the office as Gorman sat silent, not inviting him to sit down.
"You've done very well, Lee. This is the first time I've seen your plant."
"I've expanded a little since my basement days. You remember my basement days, don't you Joshua?"
Joshua winced. "Yes, I remember."
"And now you might tell me the purpose of this visit."
"I came to you because I need money."
Gorman's eyes snapped open--wide. He opened his mouth to speak. He failed, tightened his throat and tried again. "You came here after what?"
"Money. I'm broke, Lee. I haven't enough to meet my payroll."
"You expect me to bail you out--clean up your debts--put you clear?"
"I came after more than that. Merely bailing me out wouldn't help a bit. I need three hundred thousand to put my rocket in the air."
Gorman collapsed gently back into his chair like a balloon mercifully relieved of some of its content. When he spoke, it was with a slow, controlled viciousness. "I've heard of guts, Joshua. I've heard of gall--plain unmitigated nerve. But this tops anything--why, man, you threw me out! You robbed me! You left me standing in the street with a bookful of names and addresses under my arm--nothing more. Now you come here and ask for money!"
"I'm glad you've done well, Lee. There was nothing personal in what I did. I'm glad you've gone on to even bigger things than we would have achieved together."
"You're glad I've done well! Why, you pious hypocrite! I ought to have you thrown through the window instead of merely ordering you out!"
"There is no reason why I should expect any better treatment, Lee. But I had to come here. You were my last hope. I had to ask."
Joshua turned slowly from the desk. He had taken but three steps when Lee Gorman said, "Wait a minute. I'm curious. Are you really still at it--beating your brains out against that stone wall?"
"It's my dream, Lee. I've got to be the first man to put a rocket on the moon."
"But now you're broke--washed up. What's with the dream now?"
"I guess it's finished." Joshua turned and took another step; but Gorman was loath to let him go.
"Tell me," Gorman said. "What have you got in that briefcase?"
"Progress reports. Plans. I wanted to show them to you."
Gorman grinned. "All right. I've got a few minutes. Come and do it."
Joshua Lake retraced his steps. He sat down in a chair next to Gorman's desk. He laid his hat on the desk and snapped open the case.
"No," Gorman said. "Stand here by my elbow. The chair is for people I meet on even terms."
Joshua got obediently to his feet and placed himself as directed.
"And your hat," Gorman added. "You'd better hold that. You might forget it when you leave."
"Of course, Lee."
It was a ludicrous, pitiful sight but, withal, a grim note ran through the scene. Joshua supporting the case against his thigh, got out a sheaf of papers. "These are the progress reports to date. These, the projected plans."
"And when these plans are carried out you expect success?"
"Yes. Great foresight has been used. They will carry us through."
"And you expect me to loan you money on the strength of this--this day-dreaming on paper?"
"It's far more than that, Lee. You'll find the plans sound."
Lee Gorman didn't give a tinker's hoot for the plans. He was only enjoying an interview--a vengeance--he was loath to terminate. "You haven't even begun to show me what I'd need before I even considered loaning you a dime."
"I'll bring you anything you want."
"Even if I promise to turn you down after I've gone over it."
"You're calling the dance, Lee."
"All right--I'll call it. Bring me your payroll records; your cost sheets; the background reports on the key men in your organization."
"As soon as I can get them. I need some money immediately to meet my payroll."
"Then what are you waiting for?"
"I'll be back this afternoon." Joshua was halfway out the door when Lee Gorman called. "And bring the deeds to your plant--the bills of sale to your machinery and equipment."
"Certainly."
Joshua left and Lee Gorman sat motionless staring at the surface of his desk. There was a Mona Lisa smile on his rugged face.
* * * * *
"It's not worth it, Joshua," Myra said, hotly. "You won't be able to take his brow-beating and badgering day after day. And that's his intention. That's what he's giving you the money for--for the pleasure of humiliating you day after day."
"Of course, my dear. I'm fortunate that Lee is that kind of a man. He wants his revenge and he's willing to pay for it. I was hoping it would be that way--praying for it. It was my last weapon. The last weapon I had with which to beat the Moon."
A man and his dream....
"I want you to sign these papers, Joshua." Lee Gorman held out a pen and pushed the papers across the desk.
"Certainly, Lee."
"Four copies."
Joshua pushed the papers back, looked at them and smiled.
"Do you know what you signed?"
"A power of attorney, I believe. And I've signed the plant over to you. There is a large mortgage against it, however."
Lee Gorman sat back, narrowed his eyes as he looked at the wizened little man with the giant obsession. "Joshua, I think you've worked beyond your time. You've slipped your gears completely. Do you realize that with these papers I can put you in the street? That all I have to do is raise my hand and you're done?"
"I realize that, Lee."
"Then why on earth did you sign them?"
"I had no alternative."
"But what kind of an alternative is this? Giving away everything you've got?"
Joshua sighed. "You haven't raised your hand yet, Lee. I can surmount my difficulties only as I come to them. I'll think about that one when it gets here."
"Well--I've got news for you. The time to think about it is--" Gorman stopped in mid-sentence. He studied Joshua Lake for a long minute. Then he took a checkbook from his desk and wrote rapidly. "There's money to meet your payroll. The exact amount. Take it to the bank. Then, I want you in this office every day at four-thirty with a complete report of what's gone on. Don't overlook a thing. And bring any bills with you that want paying, together with material orders and projected costs. Is that clear?"
"I understand, Lee." At the door, Joshua Lake turned for a moment. "And--thank you--thank you very much."
After Joshua had left, Lee Gorman pondered one of those last words. If they contained any bitterness, it was well hidden. "A strange man," Gorman muttered. "A very strange man."
If that constituted a weak moment on the part of Lee Gorman, his dikes were repaired well in time to present a hostile front....
"This twelve thousand to American Chemical--what are you doing--running an experimental laboratory on the side. I won't pay it."
"I've never questioned Coving's judgment in these matters, Lee. He's done brilliant work for us. The man has to have materials to work with."
"Well, you certainly should have questioned him. He's been satisfying every whim of curiosity that pops into his mind. Send the stuff back."
"But that would be fatal to the project. The fuel must be power-charged to safely handle the weight and time quotients. Coving can't work with salt and baking soda."
"I don't care what he works with. Cut three thousand off that bill."
"Very well, Lee."
A man and his dream....
"This payroll's out of all reason. Cut fifteen men off immediately."
"I'll see what I can do."
"Cut fifteen men off immediately."
"Of course."
"Here's a check for the interest on the last note. Take it over to the bank."
"Yes, Lee."
Joshua Lake came and went as directed. He stood with his hat in his hand, took orders, carried them out. His shoulders drooped a little more; his face became more pinched; he retreated deeper and deeper into himself.
But as the days went on, his eyes brightened and there was a breathlessness in his expression when he turned his face to the sky.
Some three months after the day Joshua walked into Lee's office, the latter said, "The four men who are going with the rocket. You've selected them?"
"Yes. They're waiting for the day. It was a long slow process, selecting the best equipped men."
"Bring them here tomorrow afternoon."
"I'll check with them. If they all can't make it, would a later date--?"
"I said tomorrow. See to it they can make it."
"Yes, Lee."
Joshua brought the four young men to Lee Gorman's office the following day. Lee had a buffet table set up. He was the smiling, genial, expansive host. "Sit down gentlemen. I'm glad of this opportunity to meet you."
There were five chairs in the room. Gorman had already seated himself. The young men hesitated.
"Sit down, sit down."
They dropped into the chairs, glancing uneasily at Joshua Lake. Joshua turned and started toward the door.
"Don't go, Lake. I'm sure the boys would like a drink. You'll find the fixings on the buffet. Why don't you take their orders?"
The crowning insult, Joshua wondered. The last, crude insult? Lee Gorman's wounds must have been deep indeed. Joshua served drinks, brought sandwiches. Lee Gorman's geniality kept the awkwardness of the situation from bringing it to a complete standstill. "Well, Thursday is the day, I understand. How do you feel about it? Rocketing off into space. Becoming a part of the big tomorrow." Gorman's eyes caught those of Joshua Lake as he spoke the last sentence. There was laughter behind them.
The crew of the Moon rocket left shortly afterward. Joshua was the last to walk from the room. Just as he was going through the door, Lee Gorman whispered into his ear. "You can't be sure there'll be a rocket flight. I might stop it the last minute. I haven't made up my mind yet."
Joshua turned and looked at his tormentor in silence. The others had gone on down the hall. Gorman laughed and said, "I suppose that's a problem you'll face when you come to it?"
"Yes--when I come to it."
Alone in his office, Lee Gorman strode angrily to the buffet. With a sweep of his arm, he knocked a liquor bottle across the room. The motivation of the act was hard to determine, however, from Gorman's outward appearance. It could have been bitter disappointment or a fierce joy.
* * * * *
Joshua Lake walked into Lee Gorman's office, removed his hat and said, "With your permission, this is the day."
"What time?"
"It translates into 4:07 and 30 seconds, Greenwich time."
Gorman scowled. "I suppose you've arranged quite a party."
"Nothing too spectacular. We'll leave for the blasting pits at 3:00 o'clock. I'd be honored if you'd ride with me."
"Do you still own a car?"
"A small one. Its value is negligible."
"We'll go in one of mine. Be here at five minutes to three."
"Certainly." Joshua put his hat on and walked out....
They rode across the Nevada desert in a black Cadillac with the chauffeur sitting at attention and staring straight ahead. Joshua stared straight ahead also. He asked, "Are you going to stop the flight?"
Beside him, leaning forward, clutching with both hands the silver knob on a black mahogany cane, Gorman replied, "I haven't made up my mind yet."
A dot on the desert expanded into a pit, a tower, and some small buildings. The car followed the ruts of the tractors that had hauled the rocket to the launching site, and came to a halt. "That small, glass-encased platform," Joshua said. "We'll view the proceedings from there."
Gorman snorted. "I'll view them from where I please."
They were standing beside the car, Joshua slightly behind his benefactor. "From the platform."
Gorman scowled and half turned. "What are you doing?"
"I'm holding a gun against your back. It is a very small gun. No one can see it and it probably wouldn't kill you. Then again, it might. We will walk to the platform and stand together to watch the blast-off."
"You'd actually--kill, to get that ship into the air?"
"If I committed murder, I would certainly regret it the rest of my life, but the rocket must be launched."
They stood in the glass enclosure on the platform and no one came near them. Several people veered close and waved. Joshua waved back with his free hand and the people went on their way.
An hour passed. There was vast activity on the field. Gorman said, "I'm tired. I want to sit down."
"It was thoughtless of me. I should have provided chairs. It won't be long now."
It wasn't long. Five minutes later there was a roar, an explosion of color, and a silver rocket flash up into the sky almost faster than the eye could follow.
Gorman slammed the heel of his hand against the side of his head in order to restore hearing. "You can put that gun away."
"Of course. And you'll want to call the police."
Gorman growled like an annoyed bull. He jerked open the door and strode away.
Three hours later, Joshua and Myra Lake were seated in the small patio beside their home. They were seated very close together, and Myra was stroking Joshua's hand. "It's been a long time, dear; a very long time."
"Yes."
"Are you happy?"
"I'm--well, satisfied--at least partially. We've passed a big milestone. But it isn't over yet."
"You're sure this time, though?"
"Very sure."
"Thank heaven we won't have much longer to wait."
The wait was slightly less than ten minutes. Then Lee Gorman strode into the patio. Joshua sprang to his feet. "Any news?"
"Yes."
"Then they should have phoned me. I left word to be called."
"No one could get up the courage. The rocket crashed in Canada."
Joshua swayed. When he looked at Lee, his eyes were filled with a mute plea. "That is the truth?"
"It's the truth. The first flash said it appears the tail broke off in high space."
Joshua sank into his chair. "The crew--died?"
"Four more men sacrificed to your--" Gorman stopped and did not use the word obsession. There was too much agony in Joshua's face. "I'm taking the plant--I'm taking everything. I've got to. I've paid for them."
Lee Gorman walked from the patio. His steps echoed and died.
Joshua and Myra sat for a long time in silence. Myra was holding his hand. Finally she spoke. "Well, at least it's over. Now you can rest. Successful or not--you've earned it."
Joshua turned and looked into her face--looked at her as though she had just entered. "Oh no, my dear. You certainly don't expect me to--"
"Joshua!"
"Why, I'm only sixty-three. I never felt better in my life. I have a lot of good productive years ahead."
"Joshua! What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to be the first man to send a rocket to the Moon."
THE MAN FROM TIME
By Frank Belknap Long
Deep in the Future he found the answer to Man's age-old problem.
Daring Moonson, he was called. It was a proud name, a brave name. But what good was a name that rang out like a summons to battle if the man who bore it could not repeat it aloud without fear?
Moonson had tried telling himself that a man could conquer fear if he could but once summon the courage to laugh at all the sins that ever were, and do as he damned well pleased. An ancient phrase that--damned well. It went clear back to the Elizabethan Age, and Moonson had tried picturing himself as an Elizabethan man with a ruffle at his throat and a rapier in his clasp, brawling lustily in a tavern.
In the Elizabethan Age men had thrown caution to the winds and lived with their whole bodies, not just with their minds alone. Perhaps that was why, even in the year 3689, defiant names still cropped up. Names like Independence Forest and Man, Live Forever!
It was not easy for a man to live up to a name like Man, Live Forever! But Moonson was ready to believe that it could be done. There was something in human nature which made a man abandon caution and try to live up to the claims made for him by his parents at birth.
It must be bad, Moonson thought. It must be bad if I can't control the trembling of my hands, the pounding of the blood at my temples. I am like a child shut up alone in the dark, hearing rats scurrying in a closet thick with cobwebs and the tapping of a blind man's cane on a deserted street at midnight.
Tap, tap, tap--nearer and nearer through the darkness. How soon would the rats be swarming out, blood-fanged and wholly vicious? How soon would the cane strike?
He looked up quickly, his eyes searching the shadows. For almost a month now the gleaming intricacies of the machine had given him a complete sense of security. As a scholar traveling in Time he had been accepted by his fellow travelers as a man of great courage and firm determination.
For twenty-seven days a smooth surface of shining metal had walled him in, enabling him to grapple with reality on a completely adult level. For twenty-seven days he had gone pridefully back through Time, taking creative delight in watching the heritage of the human race unroll before him like a cineramoscope under glass.
Watching a green land in the dying golden sunlight of an age lost to human memory could restore a man's strength of purpose by its serenity alone. But even an age of war and pestilence could be observed without torment from behind the protective shields of the Time Machine. Danger, accidents, catastrophe could not touch him personally.
To watch death and destruction as a spectator in a traveling Time Observatory was like watching a cobra poised to strike from behind a pane of crystal-bright glass in a zoological garden.
You got a tremendous thrill in just thinking: How dreadful if the glass should not be there! How lucky I am to be alive, with a thing so deadly and monstrous within striking distance of me!
For twenty-seven days now he had traveled without fear. Sometimes the Time Observatory would pinpoint an age and hover over it while his companions took painstaking historical notes. Sometimes it would retrace its course and circle back. A new age would come under scrutiny and more notes would be taken.
But a horrible thing that had happened to him, had awakened in him a lonely nightmare of restlessness. Childhood fears he had thought buried forever had returned to plague him and he had developed a sudden, terrible dread of the fogginess outside the moving viewpane, the way the machine itself wheeled and dipped when an ancient ruin came sweeping toward him. He had developed a fear of Time.
There was no escape from that Time Fear. The instant it came upon him he lost all interest in historical research. 1069, 732, 2407, 1928--every date terrified him. The Black Plague in London, the Great Fire, the Spanish Armada in flames off the coast of a bleak little island that would soon mold the destiny of half the world--how meaningless it all seemed in the shadow of his fear!
Had the human race really advanced so much? Time had been conquered but no man was yet wise enough to heal himself if a stark, unreasoning fear took possession of his mind and heart, giving him no peace.
Moonson lowered his eyes, saw that Rutella was watching him in the manner of a shy woman not wishing to break in too abruptly on the thoughts of a stranger.
Deep within him he knew that he had become a stranger to his own wife and the realization sharply increased his torment. He stared down at her head against his knee, at her beautiful back and sleek, dark hair. Violet eyes she had, not black as they seemed at first glance but a deep, lustrous violet.
He remembered suddenly that he was still a young man, with a young man's ardor surging strong in him. He bent swiftly, kissed her lips and eyes. As he did so her arms tightened about him until he found himself wondering what he could have done to deserve such a woman.
She had never seemed more precious to him and for an instant he could feel his fear lessening a little. But it came back and was worse than before. It was like an old pain returning at an unexpected moment to chill a man with the sickening reminder that all joy must end.
His decision to act was made quickly.
The first step was the most difficult but with a deliberate effort of will he accomplished it to his satisfaction. His secret thoughts he buried beneath a continuous mental preoccupation with the vain and the trivial. It was important to the success of his plan that his companions should suspect nothing.
The second step was less difficult. The mental block remained firm and he succeeded in carrying on actual preparations for his departure in complete secrecy.
The third step was the final one and it took him from a large compartment to a small one, from a high-arching surface of metal to a maze of intricate control mechanisms in a space so narrow that he had to crouch to work with accuracy.
Swiftly and competently his fingers moved over instruments of science which only a completely sane man would have known how to manipulate. It was an acid test of his sanity and he knew as he worked that his reasoning faculties at least had suffered no impairment.
Beneath his hands the Time Observatory's controls were solid shafts of metal. But suddenly as he worked he found himself thinking of them as fluid abstractions, each a milestone in man's long progress from the jungle to the stars. Time and space--mass and velocity.
How incredible that it had taken centuries of patient technological research to master in a practical way the tremendous implications of Einstein's original postulate. Warp space with a rapidly moving object, move away from the observer with the speed of light--and the whole of human history assumed the firm contours of a landscape in space. Time and space merged and became one. And a man in an intricately-equipped Time Observatory could revisit the past as easily as he could travel across the great curve of the universe to the farthest planet of the farthest star.
The controls were suddenly firm in his hands. He knew precisely what adjustments to make. The iris of the human eye dilates and contracts with every shift of illumination, and the Time Observatory had an iris too. That iris could be opened without endangering his companions in the least--if he took care to widen it just enough to accommodate only one sturdily built man of medium height.
Sweat came out in great beads on his forehead as he worked. The light that came through the machine's iris was faint at first, the barest glimmer of white in deep darkness. But as he adjusted controls the light grew brighter and brighter, beating in upon him until he was kneeling in a circle of radiance that dazzled his eyes and set his heart to pounding.
I've lived too long with fear, he thought. I've lived like a man imprisoned, shut away from the sunlight. Now, when freedom beckons, I must act quickly or I shall be powerless to act at all.
He stood erect, took a slow step forward, his eyes squeezed shut. Another step, another--and suddenly he knew he was at the gateway to Time's sure knowledge, in actual contact with the past for his ears were now assailed by the high confusion of ancient sounds and voices!
He left the Time machine in a flying leap, one arm held before his face. He tried to keep his eyes covered as the ground seemed to rise to meet him. But he lurched in an agony of unbalance and opened his eyes--to see the green surface beneath him flashing like a suddenly uncovered jewel.
He remained on his feet just long enough to see his Time Observatory dim and vanish. Then his knees gave way and he collapsed with a despairing cry as the fear enveloped him ...
* * * * *
There were daisies in the field where he lay, his shoulders and naked chest pressed to the earth. A gentle wind stirred the grass, and the flute-like warble of a song bird was repeated close to his ear, over and over with a tireless persistence.
Abruptly he sat up and stared about him. Running parallel to the field was a winding country road and down it came a yellow and silver vehicle on wheels, its entire upper section encased in glass which mirrored the autumnal landscape with a startling clearness.
The vehicle halted directly in front of him and a man with ruddy cheeks and snow-white hair leaned out to wave at him.
"Good morning, mister!" the man shouted. "Can I give you a lift into town?"
Moonson rose unsteadily, alarm and suspicion in his stare. Very cautiously he lowered the mental barrier and the man's thoughts impinged on his mind in bewildering confusion.
He's not a farmer, that's sure ... must have been swimming in the creek, but those bathing trunks he's wearing are out of this world!
Huh! I wouldn't have the nerve to parade around in trunks like that even on a public beach. Probably an exhibitionist ... But why should he wear 'em out here in the woods? No blonds or redheads to knock silly out here!
Huh! He might have the courtesy to answer me ... Well, if he doesn't want a lift into town it's no concern of mine!
Moonson stood watching the vehicle sweep away out of sight. Obviously he had angered the man by his silence, but he could answer only by shaking his head.
He began to walk, pausing an instant in the middle of the bridge to stare down at a stream of water that rippled in the sunlight over moss-covered rocks. Tiny silver fish darted to and fro beneath a tumbling waterfall and he felt calmed and reassured by the sight. Shoulders erect now, he walked on ...
It was high noon when he reached the tavern. He went inside, saw men and women dancing in a dim light, and there was a huge, rainbow-colored musical instrument by the door which startled him by its resonance. The music was wild, weird, a little terrifying.
He sat down at a table near the door and searched the minds of the dancers for a clue to the meaning of what he saw.
The thoughts which came to him were startlingly primitive, direct and sometimes meaningless to him.
Go easy, baby! Swing it! Sure, we're in the groove now, but you never can tell! I'll buy you an orchid, honey! Not roses, just one orchid--black like your hair! Ever see a black orchid, hon? They're rare and they're expensive!
Oh, darl, darl, hold me closer! The music goes round and round! It will always be like that with us, honey! Don't ever be a square! That's all I ask! Don't ever be a square! Cuddle up to me, let yourself go! When you're dancing with one girl you should never look at another! Don't you know that, Johnny!
Sure I know it, Doll! But did I ever claim I wasn't human?
Darl, doll, doll baby! Look all you want to! But if you ever dare--
Moonson found himself relaxing a little. Dancing in all ages was closely allied to love-making, but it was pursued here with a careless rapture which he found creatively stimulating. People came here not only to dance but to eat, and the thoughts of the dancers implied that there was nothing stylized about a tavern. The ritual was a completely natural one.
In Egyptian bas-reliefs you saw the opposite in dancing. Every movement rigidly prescribed, arms held rigid and sharply bent at the elbows. Slow movements rather than lively ones, a bowing and a scraping with bowls of fruit extended in gift offerings at every turn.
There was obviously no enthroned authority here, no bejeweled king to pacify when emotions ran wild, but complete freedom to embrace joy with corybantic abandonment.
A tall man in ill-fitting black clothes approached Moonson's table, interrupting his reflections with thoughts that seemed designed to disturb and distract him out of sheer perversity. So even here there were flies in every ointment, and no dream of perfection could remain unchallenged.
He sat unmoving, absorbing the man's thoughts.
What does he think this is, a bath house? Mike says it's okay to serve them if they come in from the beach just as they are. But just one quick beer, no more. This late in the season you'd think they'd have the decency to get dressed!
The sepulchrally-dressed man gave the table a brush with a cloth he carried, then thrust his head forward like an ill-tempered scavenger bird.
"Can't serve you anything but beer. Boss's orders. Okay?"
Moonson nodded and the man went away.
Then he turned to watching the girl. She was frightened. She sat all alone, plucking nervously at the red-and-white checkered tablecloth. She sat with her back to the light, bunching the cloth up into little folds, then smoothing it out again.
She'd ground out lipstick-smudged cigarettes until the ash tray was spilling over.
Moonson began to watch the fear in her mind ...
Her fear grew when she thought that Mike wasn't gone for good. The phone call wouldn't take long and he'd be coming back any minute now. And Mike wouldn't be satisfied until she was broken into little bits. Yes, Mike wanted to see her on her knees, begging him to kill her!
Kill me, but don't hurt Joe! It wasn't his fault! He's just a kid--he's not twenty yet, Mike!
That would be a lie but Mike had no way of knowing that Joe would be twenty-two on his next birthday, although he looked eighteen at most. There was no pity in Mike but would his pride let him hot-rod an eighteen-year-old?
Mike won't care! Mike will kill him anyway! Joe couldn't help falling in love with me, but Mike won't care what Joe could help! Mike was never young himself, never a sweet kid like Joe!
Mike killed a man when he was fourteen years old! He spent seven years in a reformatory and the kids there were never young. Joe will be just one of those kids to Mike ...
Her fear kept growing.
You couldn't fight men like Mike. Mike was strong in too many different ways. When you ran a tavern with an upstairs room for special customers you had to be tough, strong. You sat in an office and when people came to you begging for favors you just laughed. Ten grand isn't hay, buddy! My wheels aren't rigged. If you think they are get out. It's your funeral.
It's your funeral, Mike would say, laughing until tears came into his eyes.
You couldn't fight that kind of strength. Mike could push his knuckles hard into the faces of people who owed him money, and he'd never even be arrested.
Mike could take money crisp and new out of his wallet, spread it out like a fan, say to any girl crazy enough to give him a second glance: "I'm interested in you, honey! Get rid of him and come over to my table!"
He could say worse things to girls too decent and self-respecting to look at him at all.
You could be so cold and hard nothing could ever hurt you. You could be Mike Galante ...
How could she have loved such a man? And dragged Joe into it, a good kid who had made only one really bad mistake in his life--the mistake of asking her to marry him.
She shivered with a chill of self-loathing and turned her eyes hesitantly toward the big man in bathing trunks who sat alone by the door.
For a moment she met the big man's eyes and her fears seemed to fade away! She stared at him ... sunburned almost black. Muscles like a lifeguard. All alone and not on the make. When he returned her stare his eyes sparkled with friendly interest, but no suggestive, flirtatious intent.
He was too rugged to be really handsome, she thought, but he wouldn't have to start digging in his wallet to get a girl to change tables, either.
Guiltily she remembered Joe, now it could only be Joe.
Then she saw Joe enter the room. He was deathly pale and he was coming straight toward her between the tables. Without pausing to weigh his chances of staying alive he passed a man and a woman who relished Mike's company enough to make them eager to act ugly for a daily handout. They did not look up at Joe as he passed but the man's lips curled in a sneer and the woman whispered something that appeared to fan the flames of her companion's malice.
Mike had friends--friends who would never rat on him while their police records remained in Mike's safe and they could count on him for protection.
She started to rise, to go to Joe and warn him that Mike would be coming back. But despair flooded her and the impulse died. The way Joe felt about her was a thing too big to stop ...
Joe saw her slim against the light, and his thoughts were like the sea surge, wild, unruly.
Maybe Mike will get me. Maybe I'll be dead by this time tomorrow. Maybe I'm crazy to love her the way I do ...
Her hair against the light, a tumbled mass of spun gold.
Always a woman bothering me for as long as I can remember. Molly, Anne, Janice ... Some were good for me and some were bad.
You see a woman on the street walking ahead of you, hips swaying, and you think: I don't even know her name but I'd like to crush her in my arms!
I guess every guy feels like that about every pretty woman he sees. Even about some that aren't so pretty. But then you get to know and like a woman, and you don't feel that way so much. You respect her and you don't let yourself feel that way.
Then something happens. You love her so much it's like the first time again but with a whole lot added. You love her so much you'd die to make her happy.
* * * * *
Joe was shaking when he slipped into the chair left vacant by Mike and reached out for both her hands.
"I'm taking you away tonight," he said. "You're coming with me."
Joe was scared, she knew. But he didn't want her to know. His hands were like ice and his fear blended with her own fear as their hands met.
"He'll kill you, Joe! You've got to forget me!" she sobbed.
"I'm not afraid of him. I'm stronger than you think. He won't dare come at me with a gun, not here before all these people. If he comes at me with his fists I'll hook a solid left to his jaw that will stretch him out cold!"
She knew he wasn't deceiving himself. Joe didn't want to die any more than she did.
The Man from Time had an impulse to get up, walk over to the two frightened children and comfort them with a reassuring smile. He sat watching, feeling their fear beating in tumultuous waves into his brain. Fear in the minds of a boy and a girl because they desperately wanted one another!
He looked steadily at them and his eyes spoke to them ...
Life is greater than you know. If you could travel in Time, and see how great is man's courage--if you could see all of his triumphs over despair and grief and pain--you would know that there is nothing to fear! Nothing at all!
Joe rose from the table, suddenly calm, quiet.
"Come on," he said quietly. "We're getting out of here right now. My car's outside and if Mike tries to stop us I'll fix him!"
The boy and the girl walked toward the door together, a young and extremely pretty girl and a boy grown suddenly to the full stature of a man.
Rather regretfully Moonson watched them go. As they reached the door the girl turned and smiled and the boy paused too--and they both smiled suddenly at the man in the bathing trunks.
Then they were gone.
Moonson got up as they disappeared, left the tavern.
It was dark when he reached the cabin. He was dog-tired, and when he saw the seated man through the lighted window a great longing for companionship came upon him.
He forgot that he couldn't talk to the man, forgot the language difficulty completely. But before this insurmountable element occurred to him he was inside the cabin.
Once there he saw that the problem solved itself--the man was a writer and he had been drinking steadily for hours. So the man did all of the talking, not wanting or waiting for an answer.
A youngish, handsome man he was, with graying temples and keenly observant eyes. The instant he saw Moonson he started to talk.
"Welcome, stranger," he said. "Been taking a dip in the ocean, eh? Can't say I'd enjoy it, this late in the season!"
Moonson was afraid at first that his silence might discourage the writer, but he did not know writers ...
"It's good to have someone to talk to," the writer went on. "I've been sitting here all day trying to write. I'll tell you something you may not know--you can go to the finest hotels, and you can open case after case of the finest wine, and you still can't get started sometimes."
The writer's face seemed suddenly to age. Fear came into his eyes and he raised the bottle to his lips, faced away from his guest as he drank as if ashamed of what he must do to escape despair every time he faced his fear.
He was trying to write himself back into fame. His greatest moment had come years before when his golden pen had glorified a generation of madcaps.
For one deathless moment his genius had carried him to the heights, and a white blaze of publicity had given him a halo of glory. Later had come lean and bitter years until finally his reputation dwindled like a gutted candle in a wintry room at midnight.
He could still write but now fear and remorse walked with him and would give him no peace. He was cruelly afraid most of the time.
Moonson listened to the writer's thoughts in heart-stricken silence--thoughts so tragic they seemed out of keeping with the natural and beautiful rhythms of his speech. He had never imagined that a sensitive and imaginative man--an artist--could be so completely abandoned by the society his genius had helped to enrich.
Back and forth the writer paced, baring his inmost thoughts ... His wife was desperately ill and the future looked completely black. How could he summon the strength of will to go on, let alone to write?
He said fiercely, "It's all right for you to talk--"
He stopped, seeming to realize for the first time that the big man sitting in an easy chair by the window had made no attempt to speak.
It seemed incredible, but the big man had listened in complete silence, and with such quiet assurance that his silence had taken on an eloquence that inspired absolute trust.
He had always known there were a few people like that in the world, people whose sympathy and understanding you could take for granted. There was a fearlessness in such people which made them stand out from the crowd, stone-markers in a desert waste to lend assurance to a tired wayfarer by its sturdy permanence, its sun-mirroring strength.
There were a few people like that in the world but you sometimes went a lifetime without meeting one. The big man sat there smiling at him, calmly exuding the serenity of one who has seen life from its tangled, inaccessible roots outward and testifies from experience that the entire growth is sound.
The writer stopped pacing suddenly and drew himself erect. As he stared into the big man's eyes his fears seemed to fade away. Confidence returned to him like the surge of the sea in great shining waves of creativeness.
* * * * *
He knew suddenly that he could lose himself in his work again, could tap the bright resonant bell of his genius until its golden voice rang out through eternity. He had another great book in him and it would get written now. It would get written ...
"You've helped me!" he almost shouted. "You've helped me more than you know. I can't tell you how grateful I am to you. You don't know what it means to be so paralyzed with fright that you can't write at all!"
The Man from Time was silent but his eyes shone curiously.
The writer turned to a bookcase and removed a volume in a faded cover that had once been bright with rainbow colors. He sat down and wrote an inscription on the flyleaf.
Then he rose and handed the book to his visitor with a slight bow. He was smiling now.
"This was my first-born!" he said.
The Man from Time looked at the title first ... THIS SIDE OF PARADISE.
Then he opened the book and read what the author had written on the flyleaf:
With warm gratefulness for a courage which brought back the sun.
F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Moonson bowed his thanks, turned and left the cabin.
Morning found him walking across fresh meadowlands with the dew glistening on his bare head and broad, straight shoulders.
They'd never find him, he told himself hopelessly. They'd never find him because Time was too vast to pinpoint one man in such a vast waste of years. The towering crests of each age might be visible but there could be no returning to one tiny insignificant spot in the mighty ocean of Time.
As he walked his eyes searched for the field and the winding road he'd followed into town. Only yesterday this road had seemed to beckon and he had followed, eager to explore an age so primitive that mental communication from mind to mind had not yet replaced human speech.
Now he knew that the speech faculty which mankind had long outgrown would never cease to act as a barrier between himself and the men and women of this era of the past. Without it he could not hope to find complete understanding and sympathy here.
He was still alone and soon winter would come and the sky grow cold and empty ...
The Time machine materialized so suddenly before him that for an instant his mind refused to accept it as more than a torturing illusion conjured up by the turbulence of his thoughts. All at once it towered in his path, bright and shining, and he moved forward over the dew-drenched grass until he was brought up short by a joy so overwhelming that it seemed to him that his heart must burst.
* * * * *
Rutella emerged from the machine with a gay little laugh, as if his stunned expression was the most amusing in the world.
"Hold still and let me kiss you, darling," her mind said to his.
She stood in the dew-bright grass on tiptoe, her sleek dark hair falling to her shoulders, an extraordinarily pretty girl to be the wife of a man so tormented.
"You found me!" his thoughts exulted. "You came back alone and searched until you found me!"
She nodded, her eyes shining. So Time wasn't too vast to pinpoint after all, not when two people were so securely wedded in mind and heart that their thoughts could build a bridge across Time.
"The Bureau of Emotional Adjustment analyzed everything I told them. Your psycho-graph ran to fifty-seven pages, but it was your desperate loneliness which guided me to you."
She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it.
"You see, darling, a compulsive fear isn't easy to conquer. No man or woman can conquer it alone. Historians tell us that when the first passenger rocket started out for Mars, Space Fear took men by surprise in the same way your fear gripped you. The loneliness, the utter desolation of space, was too much for a human mind to endure."
She smiled her love. "We're going back. We'll face it together and we'll conquer it together. You won't be alone now. Darling, don't you see--it's because you aren't a clod, because you're sensitive and imaginative that you experience fear. It's not anything to be ashamed of. You were simply the first man on Earth to develop a new and completely different kind of fear--Time Fear."
Moonson put out his hand and gently touched his wife's hair.
Ascending into the Time Observatory a thought came unbidden into his mind: Others he saved, himself he could not save.
But that wasn't true at all now.
He could help himself now. He would never be alone again! When guided by the sure hand of love and complete trust, self-knowledge could be a shining weapon. The trip back might be difficult, but holding tight to his wife's hand he felt no misgivings, no fear.
WHEN I GROW UP
by Richard E. Lowe
The two professors couldn't agree on the fundamentals of child behavior. But that was before they met little Herbux!
The University sprawled casually, unashamed of its disordered ranks, over a hundred thousand acres of grassy, rolling countryside. It was the year A.D. 3896, and the vast assemblage of schools and colleges and laboratories had been growing on this site for more than two thousand years.
It had survived political and industrial revolutions, local insurrections, global, inter-terrestrial and nuclear wars, and it had become the acknowledged center of learning for the entire known universe.
No subject was too small to escape attention at the University. None was too large to be attacked by the fearless, probing fingers of curiosity, or to in any way over-awe students and teachers in this great institution of learning.
No book was ever closed in the University and no clue, however tiny, was discarded as useless in the ceaseless search for knowledge which was the University's prime and overriding goal.
For no matter how fast and far the spaceships might fly, or what strange creatures might be brought back across the great curve of the universe or how deeply the past was resurrected or the future probed, of one thing only was the University quite sure--man did not know enough.
All manner of schools had come into being at the University, and often they functioned in pairs, one devoted to proving a proposition, and the other to disproving it. And among these pairs of schools two, in particular, seemed to exist on a most tenuous basis. Their avowed mission was to settle the age-old argument concerning the relative influences of heredity and environment.
One, headed by Professor Miltcheck von Possenfeller, worked tirelessly to prove that there was no such determining factor as heredity, and that environment alone was the governing influence in human behavior.
The other, under the direction of Dr. Arthur D. Smithlawn, was dedicated to the task of proving that environment meant nothing, and that only heredity was important.
Success, in short, could only come to those who were born with the genes of success in their bodies, and failure was as preordained for the rest as was ultimate death for all.
Over a period of more than two hundred years the School of Environment had been taking babies from among the thousands of homeless waifs gathered in throughout the universe, and raising them carefully in a closely supervised, cultural atmosphere.
The School of Heredity, on the other hand, was more select. Its pupils came only from families whose genealogy could be traced back for at least a thousand years. Freedom of choice and expression was the rule here, since the school was attempting to prove that a child's inherited tendencies will send it inevitably along a predetermined path, completely uninfluenced by outside help or hindrance.
In two centuries neither school had been able to develop an overpowering case in support of its own theory. Hence they both thrived, and cheerfully ignored the discrepancies which existed in the case records of individuals who had not turned out according to the book.
Although they were zealous professional rivals, Prof. von Possenfeller and Dr. Smithlawn were devoted personal friends. They called each other Possy and Smithy and got together once a week to play chess and exchange views on the universe in general. Only one subject was taboo between them--their experimental work.
On this particular Saturday night, however, Smithy noticed that his good friend Possy was terribly agitated and disturbed, and had for the third time carelessly put his queen in jeopardy.
"My dear friend," exclaimed Possy, blindly moving his king into check. "Could you possibly be persuaded to ignore for the moment our ban on professional talk? There is something--"
Smithy, secretly, was only too anxious to talk at great length. But he pretended to give the request serious consideration.
"If it is really important," he said. "Yes, by all means. Go right ahead."
"Smithy," Possy plunged on, "I am nonplussed. I am really, terribly disturbed. I've never felt like this before."
Smithy waited patiently while Possy poured himself a large brandy and soda, hastily gulped it down, and made a face as he regretted the action.
"How much do you know about our methods of working in the School of Environment?" the professor asked, taking a new tack.
"Nothing, of course," replied Smithy. The statement was not precisely true, but Smithy was not yet ready to confess that he had spies in his friend's school.
"Well, then," said Possy, knowing full well that Smithy had been getting reports on his college for many years, and feeling secretly glad that he, in turn, had been spying.
"Well, then," he repeated, "you should be aware that we know absolutely nothing about the children we enroll. Most of them are infants. We do not know who their parents were, or where they were born. Except for the obvious clues which their bodies furnish, we do not even know their national or racial origins.
"We bring them up with absolutely equal treatment--the finest of everything. At the age of five we divide them arbitrarily into classes and begin training them for occupations. Some we educate as scholars, some laborers, some professional men. In me, dear friend, you see one of the triumphs of our methods. I myself was a foundling--raised and educated in the School of Environment. Whatever I may be, I owe to the School."
He paused to give Smithy a chance to digest the statement.
"Of course," Possy continued, "we take into consideration such factors as physical build and muscular development. We don't train undersized boys to be freight handlers. But in general the division is arbitrary. And you'd be amazed how they respond to it. To keep a check on things, we interview our students twice a year to see how much they have learned.
"We always ask them what they want to be when they grow up. That enables us to determine whether or not the training is really taking hold. Occasionally, it is true, we find a case where the schooling seems to run counter to natural aptitudes--"
Smithy could not resist interrupting. "Natural aptitudes? I am surprised to hear you use such an expression. I thought you furnished your students with aptitudes through environmental conditioning."
Stiffly, Possy retorted, "Sometime we will have a full, objective discussion of the matter. It is not pertinent at this moment. Of course I believe in natural, or instinctive aptitudes. But I do not believe that they are inherited from parents or even from remote ancestors."
"Cosmic rays, perhaps," needled Smithy, and became instantly sorry when his friend's face began to redden. Possy didn't believe in cosmic rays, obviously. Smithy apologized.
Possy sighed deeply and made a fresh start. "My friend," he said, "in your work, as I understand it, you learn everything you can about a student's past--and about his progenitors. By so doing you hope to be able to predict his future abilities, his likes and dislikes. But what course do you pursue when you find a boy who just doesn't prove out according to the prognostications?"
Smithy mumbled a few evasive words in reply, but refused to be drawn into giving a positive answer.
"Never mind," Possy said. "What would you say if you asked a boy what he liked, or what he wanted to do and his answer concerned something that never existed, or had never been dreamed of? Something horrible."
Smithy's eyebrows perked up. He made no attempt to conceal the fact that his interest had been aroused.
"What, precisely, do you mean?" he demanded.
"Just this," Possy said, leaning forward to give emphasis to his words. "We have a boy who is being trained as a space navigator. He is very bright. He is of medium build, as a spaceman must be, and he learns easily and willingly. We are sure now that he will be ready for pre-space school two years before he reaches the minimum age. Yet, whenever this boy is asked what he wants to do, he replies, 'I want to be a Destructor.'"
Smithy's lips parted. But for a moment he remained completely silent while his mind stumbled over the strange term.
"Destructor?" he repeated, at last.
"Wait," said Possy, "and listen carefully. This boy is now ten years old. He first gave me that answer three days ago. He repeated it two days ago, then yesterday and again today. I had never interviewed him before. I never interview a student personally until the tenth year--so I quite naturally had his files double-checked. Smithy, he's been giving the same answer ever since he was five years old. Two interviews a year for six years--and three extra ones this week! Imagine! Fifteen times this boy has said he wants to be a Destructor--and no one even knows what a Destructor is."
"Well," Smithy said with a shrug, convinced that Possy was getting all excited over nothing, "I admit it seems strange--and highly single-minded for so young a boy. But don't you imagine it's some word he just made up?"
"I admitted that as a possibility until this morning. But look here."
Possy reached behind his chair and took up a small leather bag. Slowly he unzipped it and delved inside. Then, with a grim flourish, he brought forth the body of a cat.
As Smithy's eyes widened, Possy said dramatically: "Smithy, that boy killed this cat with a glance."
"With a--a what?"
"A glance! You heard me correctly. He just looked at the cat, and the beast dropped dead. And he did it to other things, too--a sparrow, a baby fox. Why, he even did it to a rat that had been cornered by this very cat.
"I tell you, I had never been so shaken by anything in all my life. I said to myself, 'Possy, have you got yourself a mutant?' 'No,' I replied. 'He's completely normal in every respect, physically and otherwise. He's a bit brighter than average, perhaps--ninety-eight six in his studies, including elementary astrophysics. He speaks brilliantly, composes poetry, even invents little gadgets. He's a genius, maybe, but not a mutant.' Then I asked myself, 'how do you account for the cat?'"
Possy paused, inferentially transferring the question to his friend.
"I can't account for the cat," Smithy said. "Unless we assume its death was a coincidence. But I confess you've aroused my curiosity. Could I see and talk to this boy who wants to be a--" he grimaced--"a Destructor?"
"I'm glad you asked." Possy sighed with relief. "Actually he is outside now, waiting to join us. But I must warn you that you'll find him quite precocious. However, he's extremely amenable."
Possy went quickly to the door, opened it and called, "Herbux, come in."
The boy entered. He was, Smithy observed, a quite ordinary-looking boy. He was so obviously ten years old that you couldn't say he was either old or young, large or small, fat or thin or anything else, "for his age." He was just ten years old and a boy.
"Herbux," said Possy, "I want you to meet a friend of mine--the famous Dr. Smithlawn."
"How do you do, sir," Herbux said politely.
"How do you do," returned Smithy. He had already decided not to be patronizing, but to take a bold, frank, comradely course with the lad.
"Herbux," he said, "Professor von Possenfeller has been telling me the story of your life. Now you tell me, Herbux. Not what you want to be when you grow up, but why."
"I don't know why, sir," Herbux replied easily. "I only know that I want to be a Destructor."
"But, Herbux, what is a Destructor?"
Herbux looked around the room. He saw Smithy's birdcage, walked over to it and stared for a moment quietly at Dicky, the doctor's parakeet.
Dicky looked back, chirped angrily twice and toppled from his perch. He landed on his back, his tiny feet rigid and unmoving. He was quite dead, Smithy observed, with a sudden, detached, unbelieving horror. Why, Dicky was seven years old and he had been as good a pet as any lonely old professor could have desired as a cheery avian companion.
"Look here, young man," he began sternly. Then, as the shock passed, he hastily changed his tone. Suppose this child did have some strange sort of power--mystic perhaps, but definitely abnormal. He may belong in the School of the Future, Smithy thought. Or perhaps in the School of the Past--the Dark Ages Department. But not here!
"Don't worry, sir," Herbux said. "I can't do it to you."
"But--do what?" Smithy cried. "What did you do?"
"I destructed."
Smithy took a deep breath. He felt as though a cruel hoax had been played on him. After all, Possy could have lied about the cat and the other creatures. And the boy was quite obviously bright enough to learn lines and play a part. But how explain Dicky?
He tried to calculate the coincidental odds that might have caused Dicky to die a natural death at one precise instant in time under unusual and exact circumstances. They proved to be incalculable to his unmathematical brain. He rubbed his face with the palms of both hands. Then he turned abruptly to Possy.
"I just don't know what to say about it," he explained. "How could I know? How could anybody know?"
He faced the boy again. "Look here, Herbux. This--this power of yours. When did you first notice you had it?"
"Last year, sir. I always knew I would do it sometime. But one day I was looking at a bird perched on my windowsill, and it fell over dead, just as your parakeet did. I thought it was an accident or a coincidence. But then the next day it happened again--with a squirrel. Soon I got to where I could do it on purpose. But I don't know how."
"Well, how do you feel about it? Do you want to kill these harmless pets?"
"Oh, no, sir. I don't want to kill them. I just want to be a Destructor."
Smithy had a sudden, disquieting conviction that he was in the presence of some completely alien, dangerous being. A cold breeze seemed to shiver through the room, though he knew that his quarters were airtight and perfectly ventilated. This is ridiculous, he told himself, turning to Possy with a helpless shrug. To feel like this over such a nice-looking young lad ...
"My friend," he said, "all this has occurred so suddenly I must have time to think. Such a thing could never have happened in my school. Perhaps you should--but doubtless it has already occurred to you--turn him over to physio-psychological rebuilding?"
Possy nodded. "It has, of course. But then I said to myself, 'Possy, they are a bunch of dunderheaded old fossils over there. They can take a criminal and tear him apart and make a good citizen out of him, granted. But do they find out why he was a criminal? Have they reduced the number of new criminals? No. And they would not find out why this boy wants to be a Destructor--nor even what a Destructor is.'
"'You're right,' I told myself. 'And besides, Herbux is a nice boy. Why, with this power of his--if he wanted to do harm--there wouldn't be an animal left alive around the whole University. And if he could do it to people he's had many an opportunity to practice on me. But has he? No, not once. Besides, if you keep him in school, you can maintain a good close watch over him. Herbux has promised to keep me fully informed as to the progress of his strange power. If he feels it getting stronger, he will let me know immediately.' Isn't that right, Herbux?"
"Yes, sir," said the boy quietly.
"You are quite sure," Smithy asked, "that you know absolutely nothing about this boy's past? His parents, his birthplace--anything at all? There must be some clue."
"You know very well I don't," Possy retorted angrily.
"I just thought that perhaps you might have subjected him to hypno-research," Smithy said, placatingly.
"I wouldn't dream of such a thing--" Possy began--and stopped with a gasp. "How did you know about that?" he demanded.
Smithy was flustered. "I--well, that is--" He could think of no convincing answer. Hypno-research was one of Possy's most secret projects. He had used it constantly in his efforts to determine reasons for non-conformity to set patterns of behavior in some of his more recalcitrant students. He had kept it a secret because it added up to an admission that perhaps heredity could play a part in the development of a student's character.
"Smithy, my dear old friend," he said with mock humility. "This is no time for us to quarrel. Let us face the facts candidly. You have been spying on my school--and I in turn have been spying on yours. I know, for instance, that when your students don't behave the way their heredity charts predict you often use hypno-therapy to change their thought-lines, and force them to conform. Is that any less fair than what I do?"
Smithy sighed. "I guess not, my friend. No, wait. I will go farther than that. It is not a matter of guessing. I am quite certain about it. We are a couple of aging frauds, struggling selfishly along, playing with the lives of these children solely to keep our jobs. Perhaps we should--"
"Nevertheless, we have a problem," interrupted Possy. "It's a problem that won't be solved by our becoming senile idiots. Get your mind back on Herbux, and help me. I feel this is a most desperate situation. If it gets beyond just the two of us, we are likely to be thoroughly investigated. Then goodness knows what would happen."
"But why? The child can do no real harm. Suppose he does 'destruct' an animal or two? There are plenty more. And sooner or later they would die of natural causes, anyway. And it's unthinkable that he could ever do it to--to people ..."
Smithy paused, obviously struck by a startling thought. He turned to Herbux. "Boy," he said, quite sternly. "Come here."
Herbux obeyed, advancing to within a foot of the old doctor and facing him squarely.
"Look me in the eyes," Smithy commanded.
Questioningly, Herbux began to stare at Smithy.
"Well," Smithy said, after a time, "turn it on."
A set look came over Herbux's face. His lips were compressed and a thin dew of sweat had broken out on his forehead.
Possy stood aghast, slowly comprehending what his old friend Smithy was doing. He was actually risking his life--or so he believed--to prove that the child could not destruct a human being. He wanted to stop the boy, but he could not move from where he stood.
Suddenly Herbux broke and turned away. He began to sob.
"It's no use!" he cried. "I can't do it. I just can't do it ..."
Smithy went to him and put an arm on his shoulders.
"Tell me, boy," he exclaimed. "What do you mean? Do you mean that you can't bring yourself to do it, or that it is physically impossible?"
Herbux just stood there, his head bowed, crying wildly.
"I just can't do it," he repeated, sounding now completely heart-broken.
Possy, coming alive again, said soothingly, "Don't cry, son. It's not bad. It's good, that you can't do it."
Herbux whirled around, facing Possy, his face inflamed with a sudden rage.
"But I will," he screamed, "I will do it! I will! When I grow up!"
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE
BY C.C. MacAPP
There's nothing wrong with dying--it just hasn't ever had the proper sales pitch!
It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error--one of two decimal places--should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred; immutable; and it is doubtful whether the President of the concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared question them--even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town.
As for the Advertising Manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them (they were the budget for the coming fiscal year) into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he'd been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he'd put in for.
When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home, he tossed clothes into a travelling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn't bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it....
* * * * *
With one thing and another, the economy hadn't been exactly in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the Administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-oriented businesses.
Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin ads struck.
Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly-working crews (at holiday rates!) slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she'd been unwrapping. She smiled as if she'd just received overtures of matrimony from an eighty-year-old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background, and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed, or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto, "The Gift That Will Last More Than a Lifetime", seemed hardly to the point.
Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that, if the young lady's gratitude were really precipitous, and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy.
Of course the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man, there was a blow directly between the eyes: "Do You Want Your Widow to Be Half-Safe?" And, for the spinster without immediate hopes, "I Dreamt I Was Caught Dead Without My Virginform Casket!"
Newspapers, magazines and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign, for sheer concentration, that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy.
Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had, grudgingly and under strong sales pressure, made space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now rushed to the telephones like touts with a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the act. Grocery supermarkets put in casket departments. The Association of Pharmaceutical Retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and whatever else could haul a coffin. The Stock Market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The President got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation-short supply. State laws were passed against cremation, under heavy lobby pressure. A new racket, called boxjacking, blossomed overnight.
The Advertising Manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after Thanksgiving they, along with the original one, were on a twenty-four hour, seven-day basis. Still only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with Yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins.
It might be supposed that Christmas goods other than caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins, that nearly everything--with a few exceptions--enjoyed the biggest season on record.
On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins, because there wasn't space in the living rooms for any other furniture.
There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn't have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now or it would be literally a case of dust to dust.
* * * * *
Of course everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our Advertising Manager, who by now was of course Sales Manager and First Vice President also, wasn't settling for any boom-and-bust. He'd been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years that now, with his teeth in something, he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred-megatonner.
Within a week, everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol.
The auto industry was of course demolished. Even people who had enough money to buy a new car weren't going to trade in the old one and let the new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with Autos. (Though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit.) A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all.
Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others--well, there was variety. Compact models appeared, in which the occupant's feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature the foetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the "Togetherness" model, triangular, with graduated recesses for Father, Mother, eight children (plus two playmates), and, in the far corner beyond the baby, the cat.
The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn't last either. They reckoned without the Advertising Manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display, sometimes in the new "Coffin-ports" being added to houses. The Advertising Manager's reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins; and now he had all the money to work with that he could use.
The new note was woven in so gradually that it is not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say, "It began here." One of the first was surely the widely-printed one showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully, lying in a coffin. He was rugged-looking and likable (not too rugged for the spindly-limbed to identify with) and he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest-looking corpse since Richard the Lion-Hearted.
Neither must one overlook the singing commercials. Possibly the catchiest of these, a really cute little thing, was achieved by jazzing up the Funeral March.
It started gradually, and it was all so un-violent that few saw it as suicide. Teen-agers began having "Popping-off parties". Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up too. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill and the heavy-laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling.
The Beatniks, who had their own models of coffin--mouldy, scroungy, and without lids, since the Beatniks insisted on being seen--placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They died with highly intellectual expressions, and eventually were washed by the gentle rain.
Of course there were voices shouting calamity. When aren't there? But in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed naught.
* * * * *
It isn't hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world. So let us imagine a few.
The Communist Block immediately gave its Stamp of Disapproval, denouncing the movement as a filthy Capitalist Imperialist Pig plot. Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the Capitalists wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population, and found it good. It also appealed to the well-known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the Red Bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything, so it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed.
An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement, on the grounds that a temporary setback in Evolution was preferable to facing up to anything.
The Free Bloc, the Red Bloc, the Neutral Bloc and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a Bloc were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it.
Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb completely. Or perhaps it is not so odd. Coffin-maker to the world, the American casket industry had by now almost completely automated box-making and gravedigging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements; there still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The President of General Mortuary, an ebullient fellow affectionately called Sarcophagus Sam, put it well. "As long as I have a single prospective customer, and a single Stockholder," he said, mangling a stogie and beetling his brows at the one reporter who'd showed up for the press conference, "I'll try to put him in a coffin so I can pay him a dividend."
* * * * *
Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human, wandered contentedly about the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an Automatic Self-Adjusting Cadaver-contour Innerspring Wearever-Plastic-Covered Mattress with a built in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine Scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself.
From a building nearby a turkey-buzzard swooped down, cawing in raucous anger because it had let its attention wander for a moment. It was too late. It clawed screaming at the solid cover, hissed in frustration and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again, still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles, where the pickings were pretty good.
As it moved westward over parched hills, it espied two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his burro had been in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn't know how to die.
The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his burro toward the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny packrats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins.
"Tarnation!" he said to the burro. "Martians?"
A half-buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood.
"They're gone, Evie," he said to the burro, "all gone." He put his arm affectionately around her neck. "I reckon it's up to me and you agin. We got to start all over." He stood back and gazed at her with mild reproach. "I shore hope they don't favor your side of the house so much this time."
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND
By Stephen Marlowe
The little house pet from Venus didn't like New York, so New York had to change.
He liked the flat cracking sound of the gun. He liked the way it slapped back against his shoulder when he fired. Somehow it did not seem a part of the dank, steaming Venusian jungle. Probably, he realized with a smile, it was the only old-fashioned recoil rifle on the entire planet. As if anyone else would want to use one of those old bone-cracking relics today! But they all failed to realize it made sport much more interesting.
"I haven't seen anything for a while," his wife said. She had a young, pretty face and a strong young body. If you have money these days, you could really keep a thirty-five-year-old woman looking trim.
Not on Venus, of course. Venus was an outpost, a frontier, a hot, wet, evil-smelling place that beckoned only the big-game hunter. He said, "That's true. Yesterday we could bag them one after the other, as fast as I could fire this contraption. Today, if there's anything bigger than a mouse, it's hiding in a hole somewhere. You know what I think, Lindy?"
"What?"
"I think there's a reason for it. A lot of the early Venusian hunters said there were days like this. An area filled with big lizards and cats and everything else the day before suddenly seems to clear out, for no reason. It doesn't make sense."
"Why not? Why couldn't they all just decide to make tracks for someplace else on the same day?"
He slapped at an insect that was buzzing around his right ear, then mopped his sweating brow with a handkerchief. His name was Judd Whitney, and people said he had a lot of money. Now he laughed, patting his wife's trim shoulder under the white tunic. "No, Lindy. It just doesn't work that way. Not on Earth and not on Venus, either. You think there's a pied-piper or something which calls all the animals away?"
"Maybe. I don't know much about those things."
"No. I don't think they went anyplace. They're just quiet. They didn't come out of their holes or hovels or down from the trees. But why?"
"Well, let's forget it. Let's go back to camp. We can try again tomor--look! Look, there's something!"
Judd followed her pointing finger with his eyes. Half-hidden by the creepers and vines clinging to an old tree-stump, something was watching them. It wasn't very big and it seemed in no hurry to get away.
"What is it?" Lindy wanted to know.
"Don't know. Never saw anything like it before. Venus is still an unknown frontier; the books only name a couple dozen of the biggest animals. But hell, Lindy, that's not game. I don't think it weighs five pounds."
"It's cute, and it has a lovely skin."
Judd couldn't argue with that. Squatting on its haunches, the creature was about twenty inches tall. It had a pointed snout and two thin, long ears. Its eyes were very big and very round and quite black. They looked something like the eyes of an Earthian tarsier, but the tarsier were bloody little beasts. The skin was short and stiff and was a kind of silvery white. Under the sheen, however, it seemed to glow. A diamond is colorless, Judd thought, but when you see it under light a whole rainbow of colors sparkle deep within it. This creature's skin was like that, Judd decided.
"If we could get enough of them," Lindy was saying, "I'd have the most unusual coat! Do you think we could find enough, Judd?"
"I doubt it. Never saw anything like it before, never heard of anything like it. You'd need fifty of 'em, anyway. Let's forget about it--too small to shoot, anyway."
"No, Judd. I want it."
"Well, I'm not going to stalk a five-pound--hey, wait a minute! I taught you how to use this rifle, so why don't you bag it?"
Lindy grinned. "That's a fine idea. I was a little scared of some of those big lizards and cats and everything, but now I'm going to take you up on it. Here, give me your gun."
Judd removed the leather thong from his shoulder and handed the weapon to her. She looked at it a little uncertainly, then took the clip of shells which Judd offered and slammed it into the chamber. The little creature sat unmoving.
"Isn't it peculiar that it doesn't run away, Judd?"
"Sure is. Nothing formidable about that animal, so unless it has a hidden poison somewhere, just about anything in this swamp could do it in. To survive it would have to be fast as hell and it would have to keep running all the time. Beats me, Lindy."
"Well, I'm going to get myself one pelt toward that coat, anyway. Watch, Judd: is this the way?" She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and squinted down the sights toward the shining creature.
"Yeah, that's the way. Only relax. Relax. Shoulder's so tense you're liable to dislocate it with the kick. There--that's better."
Now Lindy's finger was wrapped around the trigger and she remembered Judd had told her to squeeze it, not to pull it. If you pulled the trigger you jerked the rifle and spoiled your aim. You had to squeeze it slowly....
The animal seemed politely interested.
Suddenly, a delicious languor stole over Lindy. It possessed her all at once and she had no idea where it came from. Her legs had been stiff and tired from the all-morning trek through the swamp, but now they felt fine. Her whole body was suffused in a warm, satisfied glow of well-being. And laziness. It was an utterly new sensation and she could even feel it tingling at the roots of her hair. She sighed and lowered the rifle.
"I don't want to shoot it," she said.
"You just told me you did."
"I know, but I changed my mind. What's the matter, can't I change my mind?"
"Of course you can change your mind. But I thought you wanted a coat of those things."
"Yes, I suppose I do. But I don't want to shoot it, that's all."
Judd snorted. "I think you have a streak of softness someplace in that pretty head of yours!"
"Maybe. I don't know. But I'd still like the pelt. Funny, isn't it?"
"Okay, okay! But don't ask to use the gun again." Judd snatched it from her hands. "If you don't want to shoot it, then I will. Maybe we can make you a pair of gloves or something from the pelt."
And Judd pointed his ancient rifle at the little animal preparing to snap off a quick shot. It would be a cinch at this distance. Even Lindy wouldn't have missed, if she hadn't changed her mind.
Judd yawned. He'd failed to realize he was so tired. Not an aching kind of tiredness, but the kind that makes you feel good all over. He yawned again and lowered the rifle. "Changed my mind," he said. "I don't want to shoot it, either. What say we head back for camp?"
Lindy gripped his hand impulsively. "All right, Judd--but I had a brainstorm! I want it for a pet!"
"A pet?"
"Yes. I think it would be the cutest thing. Everyone would look and wonder and I'll adore it!"
"We don't know anything about it. Maybe Earth would be too cold, or too dry, or maybe we don't have anything it can eat. There are liable to be a hundred different strains of bacteria that can kill it."
"I said I want it for a pet. See? Look at it! We can call it Black Eyes."
"Black Eyes--" Judd groaned.
"Yes, Black Eyes. If you don't do this one thing for me, Judd--"
"Okay--okay. But I'm not going to do anything. You want it, you take it."
Lindy frowned, looked at him crossly, then sloshed across the swamp toward Black Eyes. The creature waited on its stump until she came quite close, and then, with a playful little bound, it hopped onto her shoulder, still squatting on its haunches. Lindy squealed excitedly and began to stroke its silvery fur.
* * * * *
A month later, they returned to Earth. Judd and Lindy and Black Eyes. The hunting trip had been a success--Judd's trophies were on their way home on a slow freighter, and he'd have some fine heads and skins for his study-room. Even Black Eyes had been no trouble at all. It ate scraps from their table, forever sitting on its haunches and staring at them with its big black eyes. Judd thought it would make one helluva lousy pet, but he didn't tell Lindy. Trouble was, it never did anything. It merely sat still, or occasionally it would bounce down to the floor and mince along on its hind-legs for a scrap of food. It never uttered a sound. It did not frolic and it did not gambol. Most of the time it could have been carved from stone. But Lindy was happy and Judd said nothing.
They had a little trouble with the customs officials. This because nothing unknown could be brought to Earth without a thorough examination.
At the customs office, a bespectacled official stared at Black Eyes, scratching his head. "Never seen one like that before."
"Neither have I," Judd admitted.
"Well, I'll look in the book." The man did, but there are no thorough tomes on Venusian fauna. "Not here."
"I could have told you."
"Well, we'll have to quarantine it and study it. That means you and your wife go into quarantine, too. It could have something that's catching."
"Absurd!" Lindy cried.
"Sorry, lady. I only work here."
"You and your bright ideas," Judd told his wife acidly. "We may be quarantined a month until they satisfy themselves about Black Eyes."
The customs official shrugged his bony shoulders, and Judd removed a twenty-credit note from his pocket and handed it to the man. "Will this change your mind?"
"I should say not! You can't bribe me, Mr. Whitney! You can't--" The man yawned, stretched languidly, smiled. "No, sir, you can keep your money, Mr. Whitney. Guess we don't have to examine your pet after all. Mighty cute little feller. Well, have fun with it. Come on, move along now." And, as they were departing with Black Eyes, still not believing their ears: "Darn this weather! Makes a man so lazy...."
It was after the affair at the customs office, that Black Eyes uttered its first sound. City life hasn't changed much in the last fifty years. Jet-cars still streak around the circumferential highways, their whistles blaring. Factories still belch smoke and steam, although the new atomic power plants have lessened that to a certain extent. Crowds still throng the streets, noisy, hurrying, ill-mannered. It's one of those things that can't be helped. A city has to live, and it has to make noise.
But it seemed to frighten Lindy's new pet. It stared through the jet-car window on the way from the spaceport to the Whitneys' suburban home, its black eyes welling with tears.
"Look!" Judd exclaimed. "Black Eyes can cry!"
"A crying pet, Judd. I knew there would be something unusual about Black Eyes, I just knew it!"
The tears in the big black eyes overflowed and tumbled out, rolling down Black Eyes' silvery cheeks. And then Black Eyes whimpered. It was only a brief whimper, but both Judd and Lindy heard it, and even the driver turned around for a moment and stared at the animal.
The driver stopped the jet. He yawned and rested his head comfortably on the cushioned seat. He went quietly to sleep.
* * * * *
A man named Merrywinkle owned the Merrywinkle Shipping Service. That, in itself, was not unusual. But at precisely the moment that Black Eyes unleashed its mild whimper, Mr. Merrywinkle--uptown and five miles away--called an emergency conference of the board of directors and declared:
"Gentlemen, we have all been working too hard, and I, for one, am going to take a vacation. I don't know when I'll be back, but it won't be before six months."
"But C.M.," someone protested. "There's the Parker deal and the Gilette contract and a dozen other things. You're needed!"
Mr. Merrywinkle shook his bald head. "What's more, you're all taking vacations, with pay. Six months, each of you. We're closing down Merrywinkle Shipping for half a year. Give the competition a break, eh?"
"But C.M.! We're about ready to squeeze out Chambers Parcel Co.! They'll get back on their feet in six months."
"Never mind. Notify all departments of the shut-down, effective immediately. Vacations for all."
* * * * *
"Who shut off the assembly belt?" the foreman asked mildly. He was not a mild man and he usually stormed and ranted at the slightest provocation. This was at Clewson Jetcraft, and you couldn't produce a single jet-plane without the assembly belt, naturally.
A plump little man said, "I did."
"But why?" the foreman asked him, smiling blandly.
"I don't know. I just did."
The foreman was still smiling. "I don't blame you."
Two days later, Clewson Jetcraft had to lay off all its help. They put ads in all the papers seeking new personnel but no one showed up. Clewson was forced to shut down.
* * * * *
The crack Boston to New York pneumo-tube commuter's special pulled to a bone-jarring stop immediately outside the New York station. Some angry commuters pried open the conductor's cab, and found the man snoozing quite contentedly. They awakened him, but he refused to drive the train any further. All the commuters had to leave the pneumo-train and edge their way along three miles of catwalk to the station. No one was very happy about it, but the feeling of well-being which came over them all nipped any possible protest in the bud.
* * * * *
Black Eyes whimpered again when Judd and Lindy reached home but after that it was quiet. It just sat on its haunches near the window and stared out at the city.
The quiet city.
Nothing moved in the streets. Nothing stirred. People remained at home watching local video or the new space-video from Mars. At first it was a good joke, and the newspapers could have had a field day with it, had the newspapers remained in circulation. After four days, however, they suspended publication. On the fifth day, there was a shortage of food in the city, great stores of it spoiling in the warehouses. Heat and light failed after a week, and the fire department ignored all alarms a day later.
But everything did not stop. School teachers still taught their classes; clerks still sold whatever goods were left on local shelves. Librarians were still at their desks.
Conservatives said it was a liberal plot to undermine capital and demand higher wages; liberals said big business could afford the temporary layoff and wanted to squeeze out the small businessman and labor unions.
Scientists pondered and city officials made speeches over video.
"Something," one of them observed, "has hit our city. Work that requires anything above a modicum of sound has become impossible; in regards to such work people have become lazy. No one can offer any valid suggestions concerning the malady. It merely exists. However, if a stop is not put to it--and soon--our fair city will disintegrate. Something is making us lazy, and that laziness can spell doom, being a compulsive lack of desire to create any noise or disturbance. If anyone believes he has the solution, he should contact the Department of Science at once. If you can't use the video-phone, come in person. But come! Every hour which passes adds to the city's woes."
Nothing but scatter-brained ideas for a week, none of them worth consideration. Then the bespectacled customs official who had bypassed quarantine for Black Eyes, got in touch with the authorities. He had always been a conscientious man--except for that one lapse. Maybe the queer little beast had nothing to do with this crisis. But then again, the customs official had never before--or since--had that strange feeling of lassitude. Could there be some connection?
A staff of experts on extra-terrestrial fauna was dispatched to the Whitney residence, although, indeed, the chairman of the Department of Science secretly considered the whole idea ridiculous.
The staff of experts introduced themselves. Then, ignoring the protests of Lindy, went to work on Black Eyes. At first Judd thought the animal would object, but apparently it did not. While conditions all about them in the city worsened, the experts spent three days studying Black Eyes.
They found nothing out of the ordinary.
Black Eyes merely stared back at them, and but for an accident, they would have departed without a lead. On the third day, a huge mongrel dog which belonged to the Whitneys' next-door neighbors somehow slipped its leash. It was a fierce and ugly animal, and it was known to attack anything smaller than itself. It jumped the fence and landed in Judd Whitney's yard. A few loping bounds took it through an open window, ground level. Inside, it spied Black Eyes and made for the creature at once, howling furiously.
Black Eyes didn't budge.
And the mongrel changed its mind! The slavering tongue withdrew inside the chops, the howling stopped. The mongrel lay down on the floor and whined. Presently it lost all interest, got to its feet, and left as it had come.
Other animals were brought to the Whitney home. Cats. Dogs. A lion from the city zoo, starved for two days and brought in a special mobile cage by its keeper. Black Eyes was thrust into the cage and the lion gave forth with a hideous yowling. Soon it stopped, rolled over, and slept.
* * * * *
The scientists correlated their reports, returned with them to the Whitney house. The leader, whose name was Jamison, said: "As closely as we can tell, Black Eyes is the culprit."
"What?" Lindy demanded.
"Yes, Mrs. Whitney. Your pet, Black Eyes."
"Oh, I don't believe it!"
But Judd said, "Go ahead, Dr. Jamison. I'm listening."
"Well, how does an animal--any animal--protect itself?"
"Why, in any number of ways. If it has claws or a strong jaw and long teeth, it can fight. If it is fleet of foot, it can run. If it is big and has a tough hide, most other animals can't hurt it anyway. Umm-mm, doesn't that about cover it?"
"You left out protective coloration, defensive odors, and things like that. Actually, those are most important from our point of view, for Black Eyes' ability is a further ramification of that sort of thing. Your pet is not fast. It isn't strong. It can't change color and it has no offensive odor to chase off predatory enemies. It has no armor. In short, can you think of a more helpless creature to put down in those Venusian swamps?"
After Judd had shaken his head, Dr. Jamison continued: "Very well, Black Eyes should not be able to survive on Venus--and yet, obviously the creature did. We can assume there are more of the breed, too. Anyway, Black Eyes survives. And I'll tell you why.
"Black Eyes has a very uncommon ability to sense danger when it approaches. And sensing danger, Black Eyes can thwart it. Your creature sends out certain emanations--I won't pretend to know what they are--which stamp aggression out of any predatory creatures. Neither of you could fire upon it--right?"
"Umm-mm, that's true," Judd said.
Lindy nodded.
"Well, that's one half of it. There's so much about life we don't understand. Black Eyes uses energy of an unknown intensity, and the result maintains Black Eyes' life. Now, although that is the case, your animal did not live a comfortable life in the Venusian swamp. Because no animal would attack it, it could not be harmed. Still, from what you tell me about that swamp ...
"Anyhow, Black Eyes was glad to come away with you, and everything went well until you landed in New York. The noises, the clattering, the continual bustle of a great city--all this frightened the creature. It was being attacked--or, at least that's what it must have figured. Result: it struck back the only way it knew how. Have you ever heard about sub-sonic sound-waves, Mr. Whitney, waves of sound so low that our ears cannot pick them up--waves of sound which can nevertheless stir our emotions? Such things exist, and, as a working hypothesis, I would say Black Eyes' strange powers rest along those lines. The whole city is idle because Black Eyes is afraid!"
In his exploration of Mars, of Venus, of the Jovian moons, Judd Whitney had seen enough of extra-terrestrial life to know that virtually anything was possible, and Black Eyes would be no exception to that rule.
"What do you propose to do?" Judd demanded.
"Do? Why, we'll have to kill your creature, naturally. You can set a value on it and we will meet it, but Black Eyes must die."
"No!" Lindy cried. "You can't be sure, you're only guessing, and it isn't fair!"
"My dear woman, don't you realize this is a serious situation? The city's people will starve in time. No one can even bring food in because the trucks make too much noise! As an alternative, we could evacuate, but is your pet more valuable than the life of a great city?"
"N-no...."
"Then, please! Listen to reason!"
"Kill it," Judd said. "Go ahead."
Dr. Jamison withdrew from his pocket a small blasting pistol used by the Department of Domestic Animals for elimination of injured creatures. He advanced on Black Eyes, who sat on its haunches in the center of the room, surveying the scientist.
Dr. Jamison put his blaster away. "I can't," he said. "I don't want to."
Judd smiled. "I know it. No one--no thing--can kill Black Eyes. You said so yourself. It was a waste of time to try it. In that case--"
"In that case," Dr. Jamison finished for him, "we're helpless. There isn't a man--or an animal--on Earth that will destroy this thing. Wait a minute--does it sleep, Mr. Whitney?"
"I don't think so. At least, I never saw it sleep. And your team of scientists, did they report anything?"
"No. As far as they could see, the creature never slept. We can't catch it unawares."
"Could you anesthetize it?"
"How? It can sense danger, and long before you could do that, it would stop you. It's only made one mistake, Mr. Whitney: it believes the noises of the city represent a danger. And that's only a negative mistake. Noise won't hurt Black Eyes, of course. It simply makes the animal unnecessarily cautious. But we cannot anesthetize it any more than we can kill it."
"I could take it back to Venus."
"Could you? Could you? I hadn't thought of that."
Judd shook his head. "I can't."
"What do you mean you can't?"
"It won't let me. Somehow it can sense our thoughts when we think something it doesn't want. I can't take it to Venus! No man could, because it doesn't want to go."
"My dear Mr. Whitney--do you mean to say you believe it can think?"
"Uh-uh. Didn't say that. It can sense our thoughts, and that's something else again."
Dr. Jamison threw his hands up over his head in a dramatic gesture. "It's hopeless," he said.
* * * * *
Things grew worse. New York crawled along to a standstill. People began to move from the city. In trickles, at first, but the trickles became torrents, as New York's ten million people began to depart for saner places. It might take months--it might even take years, but the exodus had begun. Nothing could stop it. Because of a harmless little beast with the eyes of a tarsier, the life of a great city was coming to an end.
Word spread. Scientists all over the world studied reports on Black Eyes. No one had any ideas. Everyone was stumped. Black Eyes had no particular desire to go outside. Black Eyes merely remained in the Whitney house, contemplating nothing in particular, and stopping everything.
Dr. Jamison, however, was a persistent man. Judd got a letter from him one day, and the following afternoon he kept his appointment with the scientist.
"It's good to get out," Judd said, after a three hour walk to the Department of Science Building. "I can go crazy just staring at that thing."
"I have it, Whitney."
"You have what? Not the way to destroy Black Eyes? I don't believe it!"
"It's true. Consider. Everyone in the world does not yet know of your pet, correct?"
"I suppose there are a few people who don't--"
"There are many. Among them, are the crew of a jet-bomber which has been on maneuvers in Egypt. We have arranged everything."
"Yes? How?"
"At noon tomorrow, the bomber will appear over your home with one of the ancient, high-explosive missiles. Your neighbors will be removed from the vicinity, and, precisely at twelve-o-three in the afternoon, the bomb will be dropped. Your home will be destroyed. Black Eyes will be destroyed with it."
Judd looked uncomfortable. "I dunno," he said. "Sounds too easy."
"Too easy? I doubt if the animal will ever sense what is going on--not when the crew of the bomber doesn't know, either. They'll consider it a mighty peculiar order, to destroy one harmless, rather large and rather elaborate suburban home. But they'll do it. See you tomorrow, Whitney, after this mess is behind us."
"Yeah," Judd said. "Yeah." But somehow, the scientist had failed to instill any of his confidence in Judd.
* * * * *
With Lindy, he left home at eleven the following morning, after making a thorough list of all their properties which the City had promised to duplicate. Judd did not look at Black Eyes as he left, and the animal remained where it was, seated on its haunches under the dining room table, nibbling crumbs. Judd could almost feel the big round eyes boring a pair of twin holes in his back, and he dared not turn around to face them....
They were a mile away at eleven forty-five, making their way through the nearly deserted streets. Judd stopped walking. He looked at Lindy. Lindy looked at him.
"They're going to destroy it," he said.
"I know."
"Do you want them to?"
"I--I--"
Judd knew that something had to be done with Black Eyes. He didn't like the little beast, and, anyway, that had nothing to do with it. Black Eyes was a menace. And yet, something whispered in Judd's ear, Don't let them, don't let them ... It wasn't Judd and it wasn't Judd's subconscious. It was Black Eyes, and he knew it. But he couldn't do a thing about it--
"I'm going to stay right here and let them bomb the place," he said aloud. But as he spoke, he was running back the way he had come.
Fifteen minutes.
He sprinted part of the time, then rested, then sprinted again. He was somewhat on the beefy side and he could not run fast, but he made it. Just.
He heard the jet streaking through the sky overhead, looked up once and saw it circling. Two blocks from his house he was met by a policeman. The entire area had been roped off, and the officer shook his head when Judd tried to get through.
"But I live there!"
"Can't help it, Mister. Orders is orders."
Judd hit him. Judd didn't want to, but nevertheless, he grunted with satisfaction when he felt the blow to be a good one, catching the stocky officer on the point of his chin and tumbling him over backwards. Then Judd was ducking under the rope and running.
He reached his house, plummeted in through the front door. He found Black Eyes under the kitchen table, squatting on its haunches. He scooped the animal up, ran outside. Then he was running again, and before he reached the barrier, something rocked him. A loud series of explosions ripped through his brain, and instinctively--Black Eyes' instincts, not his--he folded his arms over the animal, protecting it. Something shuddered and began to fall behind him, and debris scattered in all directions. Something struck Judd's head and he felt the ground slapping up crazily at his face--
He was as good as new a few days later.
And so was Black Eyes.
"I have it," Judd said to his nurse.
"You have what, sir?"
"It's so simple, so ridiculously simple, maybe that's why no one ever thought of it. Get me Dr. Jamison!"
Jamison came a few moments later, breathless. "Well?"
"I have the solution."
"You ... do?" Not much hope in the answer. Dr. Jamison was a tired, defeated man.
"Sure. Black Eyes doesn't like the city. Fine. Take him out. I can't take him to Venus. He doesn't like Venus and he won't go. No one can take him anyplace he doesn't want to go, just as no one can hurt him in any way. But he doesn't like the city. It's too noisy. All right: have someone take him far from the city, far far away--where there's no noise at all. Someplace out in the sticks where it won't matter much if Black Eyes puts a stop to any disturbing noises."
"Who will take him? You, Mr. Whitney?"
Judd shook his head. "That's your job, not mine. I've given you the answer. Now use it."
Lindy had arrived, and Lindy said: "Judd, you're right. That is the answer. And you're wonderful--"
No one volunteered to spend his life in exile with Black Eyes, but then Dr. Jamison pointed out that while no one knew the creature's life-span, it certainly couldn't be expected to match man's. Just a few years and the beast would die, and ... Dr. Jamison's arguments were so logical that he convinced himself. He took Black Eyes with him into the Canadian Northwoods, and there they live.
* * * * *
Judd was right--almost.
This was the obvious answer which escaped everyone.
But scientists continued their examinations of Black Eyes, and they discovered something. Black Eyes' fears had not been for herself alone. She is going to have babies. The estimate is for thirty-five little tarsier-eyed creatures. No doctor in the world will be able to do anything but deliver the litter.
THE END
PUSHBUTTON WAR
By JOSEPH P. MARTINO
In one place, a descendant of the Vikings rode a ship such as Lief never dreamed of; from another, one of the descendants of the Caesars, and here an Apache rode a steed such as never roamed the plains. But they were warriors all.
The hatch swung open, admitting a blast of Arctic air and a man clad in a heavy, fur-lined parka. He quickly closed the hatch and turned to the man in the pilot's couch.
"O.K., Harry. I'll take over now. Anything to report?"
"The heading gyro in the autopilot is still drifting. Did you write it up for Maintenance?"
"Yeah. They said that to replace it they'd have to put the ship in the hangar, and it's full now with ships going through periodic inspection. I guess we'll have to wait. They can't just give us another ship, either. With the hangar full, we must be pretty close to the absolute minimum for ships on the line and ready to fly."
"O.K. Let me check out with the tower, and she'll be all yours." He thumbed the intercom button and spoke into the mike: "RI 276 to tower. Major Lightfoot going off watch."
When the tower acknowledged, he began to disconnect himself from the ship. With smooth, experienced motions, he disconnected the mike cable, oxygen hose, air pressure hose, cooling air hose, electrical heating cable, and dehumidifier hose which connected his flying suit to the ship. He donned the parka and gloves his relief had worn, and stepped through the hatch onto the gantry crane elevator. Even through the heavy parka, the cold air had a bite to it. As the elevator descended, he glanced to the south, knowing as he did so that there would be nothing to see. The sun had set on November 17th, and was not due up for three more weeks. At noon, there would be a faint glow on the southern horizon, as the sun gave a reminder of its existence, but now, at four in the morning, there was nothing. As he stepped off the elevator, the ground crew prepared to roll the gantry crane away from the ship. He opened the door of the waiting personnel carrier and swung aboard. The inevitable cry of "close that door" greeted him as he entered. He brushed the parka hood back from his head, and sank into the first empty seat. The heater struggled valiantly with the Arctic cold to keep the interior of the personnel carrier at a tolerable temperature, but it never seemed able to do much with the floor. He propped his feet on the footrest of the seat ahead of him, spoke to the other occupant of the seat.
"Hi, Mike."
"Hi, Harry. Say, what's your watch schedule now?"
"I've got four hours off, back on for four, then sixteen off. Why?"
"Well, a few of us are getting up a friendly little game before we go back on watch. I thought you might want to join us."
"Well, I--"
"Come on, now. What's your excuse this time for not playing cards?"
"To start with, I'm scheduled for a half hour in the simulator, and another half hour in the procedural trainer. Then if I finish the exam in my correspondence course, I can get it on this week's mail plane. If I don't get it in the mail now, I'll have to wait until next week."
"All right, I'll let you off this time. How's the course coming?"
"This is the final exam. If I pass, I'll have only forty-two more credits to go before I have my degree in Animal Husbandry."
"What on earth do you want with a degree like that?"
"I keep telling you. When I retire, I'm going back to Oklahoma and raise horses. If I got into all the card games you try to organize, I'd retire with neither the knowledge to run a horse ranch, nor the money to start one."
"But why raise horses? Cabbages, I can see. Tomatoes, yes. But why horses?"
"Partly because there's always a market for them, so I'll have a fair amount of business to keep me eating regularly. But mostly because I like horses. I practically grew up in the saddle. By the time I was old enough to do much riding, Dad had his own ranch, and I helped earn my keep by working for him. Under those circumstances, I just naturally learned to like horses."
"Guess I never thought of it like that. I was a city boy myself. The only horses I ever saw were the ones the cops rode. I didn't get much chance to became familiar with the beasts."
* * * * *
"Well, you don't know what you missed. It's just impossible to describe what it's like to use a high-spirited and well-trained horse in your daily work. The horse almost gets to sense what you want him to do next. You don't have to direct his every move. Just a word or two, and a touch with your heel or the pressure of your knee against his side, and he's got the idea. A well-trained horse is perfectly capable of cutting a particular cow out of a herd without any instructions beyond showing him which one you want."
"It's too bad the Army did away with the cavalry. Sounds like you belong there, not in the Air Force."
"No, because if there's anything I like better than riding a good horse, it's flying a fast and responsive airplane. I've been flying fighters for almost seventeen years now, and I'll be quite happy to keep flying them as long as they'll let me. When I can't fly fighters any more, then I'll go back to horses. And much as I like horses, I hope that's going to be a long time yet."
"You must hate this assignment, then. How come I never hear you complain about it?"
"The only reason I don't complain about this assignment is that I volunteered for it. And I've been kicking myself ever since. When I heard about the Rocket Interceptors, I was really excited. Imagine a plane fast enough to catch up with an invading ballistic missile and shoot it down. I decided this was for me, and jumped at the assignment. They sounded like the hot fighter planes to end all hot fighter planes. And what do I find? They're so expensive to fly that we don't get any training missions. I've been up in one just once, and that was my familiarization flight, when I got into this assignment last year. And then it was only a ride in the second seat of that two-seat version they use for checking out new pilots. I just lay there through the whole flight. And as far as I could see, the pilot didn't do much more. He just watched things while the autopilot did all the work."
"Well, don't take it too hard. You might get some flights."
"That's true. They do mistake a meteor for a missile now and then. But that happens only two or three times a year. That's not enough. I want some regular flying. I haven't got any flying time in for more than a year. The nearest I come to flying is my time in the procedural trainer, to teach me what buttons to push, and in the simulator, to give me the feel of what happens when I push the buttons."
"That's O.K. They still give you your flying pay."
"I know, but that's not what I'm after. I fly because I love flying. I use the flying pay just to keep up the extra premiums the insurance companies keep insisting on so long as I indulge my passion for fighter planes."
"I guess about the only way you could get any regular flying on this job would be for a war to come along."
"That's about it. We'd fly just as often as they could recover our ships and send us back up here for another launch. And that would go on until the economy on both sides broke down so far they couldn't make any more missiles for us to chase, or boosters to send us up after them. No thanks. I don't want to fly that badly. I like civilization."
"In the meantime, then, you ought to try to enjoy it here. Where else can you spend most of your working hours lying flat on your back on the most comfortable couch science can devise?"
"That's the trouble. Just lying there, where you can't read, write, talk, or listen. It might be O.K. for a hermit, but I'd rather fly fighter planes. Here's the trainer building. I've got to get out."
* * * * *
Seven o'clock. Harry Lightfoot licked the flap on the envelope, sealed it shut, stuck some stamps on the front, and scrawled "AIR MAIL" under the stamps. He dropped the letter into the "STATESIDE" slot. The exam hadn't been so bad. What did they think he was, anyway? A city slicker who had never seen a live cow in his life? He ambled into the off-duty pilots' lounge. He had an hour to kill before going on watch, and this was as good a place as any to kill it. The lounge was almost empty. Most of the pilots must have been asleep. They couldn't all be in Mike's game. He leaned over a low table in the center of the room and started sorting through the stack of magazines.
"Looking for anything in particular, Harry?"
He turned to face the speaker. "No, just going through these fugitives from a dentist's office to see if there's anything I haven't read yet. I can't figure out where all the new magazines go. The ones in here always seem to be exactly two months old."
"Here's this month's Western Stories. I just finished it. It had some pretty good stories in it."
"No, thanks, the wrong side always wins in that one."
"The wrong ... oh, I forgot. I guess they don't write stories where your side wins."
"It's not really a question of 'my side'. My tribe gave up the practice of tribal life and tribal customs over fifty years ago. I had the same education in a public school as any other American child. I read the same newspapers and watch the same TV shows as anyone else. My Apache ancestry means as little to me as the nationality of his immigrant ancestors means to the average American. I certainly don't consider myself to be part of a nation still at war with the 'palefaces'."
"Then what's wrong with Western stories where the United States Cavalry wins?"
"That's a different thing entirely. Some of the earliest memories I have are of listening to my grandfather tell me about how he and his friends fought against the horse-soldiers when he was a young man. I imagine he put more romance than historical accuracy into his stories. After all, he was telling an eager kid about the adventures he'd had over fifty years before. But at any rate, he definitely fixed my emotions on the side of the Indians and against the United States Cavalry. And the fact that culturally I'm descended from the Cavalry rather than from the Apache Indians doesn't change my emotions any."
"I imagine that would have a strong effect on you. These stories are really cheering at the death of some of your grandfather's friends."
"Oh, it's worse than that. In a lot of hack-written stories, the Indians are just convenient targets for the hero to shoot at while the author gets on with the story. Those stories are bad enough. But the worst are the ones where the Indians are depicted as brutal savages with no redeeming virtues. My grandfather had an elaborate code of honor which governed his conduct in battle. It was different from the code of the people he fought, but it was at least as rigid, and deviations from it were punished severely. He'd never read Clausewitz. To him, war wasn't an 'Instrument of National Policy'. It was a chance for the individual warrior to demonstrate his skill and bravery. His code put a high premium on individual courage in combat, and the weakling or coward was crushed contemptuously. I don't even attempt to justify the Indian treatment of captured civilians and noncombatants, but nevertheless, I absorbed quite a few of my grandfather's ideals and views about war, and it's downright disgusting to see him so falsely represented by the authors of the run-of-the-mill Western story or movie."
"Well, those writers have to eat, too. And maybe they can't hold an honest job. Besides, you don't still look at war the way your grandfather did, do you? Civilization requires plenty of other virtues besides courage in combat, and we have plenty of better ways to display those virtues. And the real goal of the fighting man is to be alive after the war so he can go home to enjoy the things he was fighting for."
"No, I hadn't been in Korea long before I lost any notions I might have had of war as the glorious adventure my grandfather described it to be. It's nothing but a bloody business, and should be resorted to only if everything else fails. But I still think the individual fighter could do a lot worse than follow the code that my grandfather believed in."
"That's so, especially since the coward usually gets shot anyway; if not by the enemy, then by his own side. Hey, it's getting late! I've got some things to do before going on watch. Be seeing you."
"O.K. I'll try to find something else here I haven't read yet."
* * * * *
Eight o'clock. Still no sign of the sun. The stars didn't have the sky to themselves, however. Two or three times a minute a meteor would be visible, most of them appearing to come from a point about halfway between the Pole Star and the eastern horizon. Harry Lightfoot stopped the elevator, opened the hatch, and stepped in.
"She's all yours, Harry. I've already checked out with the tower."
"O.K. That gyro any worse?"
"No, it seems to have steadied a bit. Nothing else gone wrong, either."
"Looks like we're in luck for a change."
"Let me have the parka and I'll clear out. I'll think of you up here while I'm relaxing. Just imagine; a whole twenty-four hours off, and not even any training scheduled."
"Someone slipped up, I'll bet. By the way, be sure to look at the fireworks when you go out. They're better now than I've seen them at any time since they started."
"The meteor shower, you mean? Thanks. I'll take a look. I'll bet they're really cluttering up the radar screens. The Launch Control Officer must be going quietly nuts."
* * * * *
The Launch Control Officer wasn't going nuts. Anyone who went nuts under stress simply didn't pass the psychological tests required of prospective Launch Control Officers. However, he was decidedly unhappy. He sat in a dimly-lighted room, facing three oscilloscope screens. On each of them a pie-wedge section was illuminated by a white line which swept back and forth like a windshield wiper. Unlike a windshield wiper, however, it put little white blobs on the screen, instead of removing them. Each blob represented something which had returned a radar echo. The center screen was his own radar. The outer two were televised images of the radar screens at the stations a hundred miles on either side of him, part of a chain of stations extending from Alaska to Greenland. In the room, behind him, and facing sets of screens similar to his, sat his assistants. They located the incoming objects on the screen and set automatic computers to determining velocity, trajectory, and probable impact point.
This information appeared as coded symbols beside the tracks on the center screen of the Launch Control Officer, as well as all duplicate screens. The Launch Control Officer, and he alone, had the responsibility to determine whether the parameters for a given track were compatible with an invading Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, or whether the track represented something harmless. If he failed to launch an interceptor at a track that turned out to be hostile, it meant the death of an American city. However, if he made a habit of launching interceptors at false targets, he would soon run out of interceptors. And only under the pressure of actual war would the incredible cost of shipping in more interceptors during the winter be paid without a second thought. Normally, no more could be shipped in until spring. That would mean a gap in the chain that could not be covered adequately by interceptors from the adjacent stations.
His screens were never completely clear. And to complicate things, the Quadrantids, which start every New Year's Day and last four days, were giving him additional trouble. Each track had to be analyzed, and the presence of the meteor shower greatly increased the number of tracks he had to worry about. However, the worst was past. One more day and they would be over. The clutter on his screens would drop back to normal.
Even under the best of circumstances, his problem was bad. He was hemmed in on one side by physics, and on the other by arithmetic. The most probable direction for an attack was from over the Pole. His radar beam bent only slightly to follow the curve of the Earth. At great range, the lower edge of the beam was too far above the Earth's surface to detect anything of military significance. On a minimum altitude trajectory, an ICBM aimed for North America would not be visible until it reached 83° North Latitude on the other side of the Pole. One of his interceptors took three hundred eighty-five seconds to match trajectories with such a missile, and the match occurred only two degrees of latitude south of the station. The invading missile traveled one degree of latitude in fourteen seconds. Thus he had to launch the interceptor when the missile was twenty-seven degrees from intercept. This turned out to be 85° North Latitude on the other side of the Pole. This left him at most thirty seconds to decide whether or not to intercept a track crossing the Pole. And if several tracks were present, he had to split that time among them. If too many tracks appeared, he would have to turn over portions of the sky to his assistants, and let them make the decisions about launching. This would happen only if he felt an attack was in progress, however.
Low-altitude satellites presented him with a serious problem, since there is not a whole lot of difference between the orbit of such a satellite and the trajectory of an ICBM. Fortunately most satellite orbits were catalogued and available for comparison with incoming tracks. However, once in a while an unannounced satellite was launched, and these could cause trouble. Only the previous week, at a station down the line, an interceptor had been launched at an unannounced satellite. Had the pilot not realized what he was chasing and held his fire, the international complications could have been serious. It was hard to imagine World War III being started by an erroneous interceptor launching, but the State Department would be hard put to soothe the feelings of some intensely nationalistic country whose expensive new satellite had been shot down. Such mistakes were bound to occur, but the Launch Control Officer preferred that they be made when someone else, not he, was on watch. For this reason he attempted to anticipate all known satellites, so they would be recognized as soon as they appeared.
According to the notes he had made before coming on watch, one of the UN's weather satellites was due over shortly. A blip appeared on the screen just beyond the 83° latitude line, across the Pole. He checked the time with the satellite ephemeris. If this were the satellite, it was ninety seconds early. That was too much error in the predicted orbit of a well-known satellite. Symbols sprang into existence beside the track. It was not quite high enough for the satellite, and the velocity was too low. As the white line swept across the screen again, more symbols appeared beside the track. Probable impact point was about 40° Latitude. It certainly wasn't the satellite. Two more blips appeared on the screen, at velocities and altitudes similar to the first. Each swipe of the white line left more new tracks on the screen. And the screens for the adjacent stations were showing similar behavior. These couldn't be meteors.
The Launch Control Officer slapped his hand down on a red push-button set into the arm of his chair, and spoke into his mike. "Red Alert. Attack is in progress." Then switching to another channel, he spoke to his assistants: "Take your preassigned sectors. Launch one interceptor at each track identified as hostile." He hadn't enough interceptors to double up on an attack of this size, and a quick glance at the screens for the adjacent stations showed he could expect no help from them. They would have their hands full. In theory, one interceptor could handle a missile all by itself. But the theory had never been tried in combat. That lack was about to be supplied.
* * * * *
Harry Lightfoot heard the alarm over the intercom. He vaguely understood what would happen before his launch order came. As each track was identified as hostile, a computer would be assigned to it. It would compute the correct time of launch, select an interceptor, and order it off the ground at the correct time. During the climb to intercept, the computer would radio steering signals to the interceptor, to assure that the intercept took place in the most efficient fashion. He knew RI 276 had been selected when a green light on the instrument panel flashed on, and a clock dial started indicating the seconds until launch. Just as the clock reached zero, a relay closed behind the instrument panel. The solid-fuel booster ignited with a roar. He was squashed back into his couch under four gees' acceleration.
Gyroscopes and acceleration-measuring instruments determined the actual trajectory of the ship; the navigation computer compared the actual trajectory with the trajectory set in before take-off; when a deviation from the pre-set trajectory occurred, the autopilot steered the ship back to the proper trajectory. As the computer on the ground obtained better velocity and position information about the missile from the ground radar, it sent course corrections to the ship, which were accepted in the computer as changes to the pre-set trajectory. The navigation computer hummed and buzzed; lights flickered on and off on the instrument panel; relays clicked behind the panel. The ship steered itself toward the correct intercept point. All this automatic operation was required because no merely human pilot had reflexes fast enough to carry out an intercept at twenty-six thousand feet per second. And even had his reflexes been fast enough, he could not have done the precise piloting required while being pummeled by this acceleration.
As it was, Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, lay motionless in his acceleration couch. His face was distorted by the acceleration. His breathing was labored. Compressed-air bladders in the legs of his gee-suit alternately expanded and contracted, squeezing him like the obscene embrace of some giant snake, as the gee-suit tried to keep his blood from pooling in his legs. Without the gee-suit, he would have blacked out, and eventually his brain would have been permanently damaged from the lack of blood to carry oxygen to it.
A red light on the instrument panel blinked balefully at him as it measured out the oxygen he required. Other instruments on the panel informed him of the amount of cooling air flowing through his suit to keep his temperature within the tolerable range, and the amount of moisture the dehumidifier had to carry away from him so that his suit didn't become a steam-bath. He was surrounded by hundreds of pounds of equipment which added nothing to the performance of the ship; which couldn't be counted as payload; which cut down on the speed and altitude the ship might have reached without them. Their sole purpose was to keep this magnificent high-performance, self-steering machine from killing its load of fragile human flesh.
At one hundred twenty-eight seconds after launch, the acceleration suddenly dropped to zero. He breathed deeply again, and swallowed repeatedly to get the salty taste out of his throat. His stomach was uneasy, but he wasn't spacesick. Had he been prone to spacesickness, he would never have been accepted as a Rocket Interceptor pilot. Rocket Interceptor pilots had to be capable of taking all the punishment their ships could dish out.
He knew there would be fifty seconds of free-fall before the rockets fired again. One solid-fuel stage had imparted to the ship a velocity which would carry it to the altitude of the missile it was to intercept. A second solid-fuel stage would match trajectories with the missile. Final corrections would be made with the liquid-fuel rockets in the third stage. The third stage would then become a glider which eventually would carry him back to Earth.
Before the second stage was fired, however, the ship had to be oriented properly. The autopilot consulted its gyros, took some star sights, and asked the navigation computer some questions. The answers came back in seconds, an interval which was several hours shorter than a human pilot would have required. Using the answers, the autopilot started to swing the ship about, using small compressed-gas jets for the purpose. Finally, satisfied with the ship's orientation, the autopilot rested. It patiently awaited the moment, precisely calculated by the computer on the ground, when it would fire the second stage.
Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, waited idly for the next move of his ship. He could only fume inwardly. This was no way for an Apache warrior to ride into battle. What would his grandfather think of a steed which directed itself into battle and which could kill its rider, not by accident, but in its normal operation? He should be actively hunting for that missile, instead of lying here, strapped into his couch so he wouldn't hurt himself, while the ship did all the work.
As for the missile, it was far to the north and slightly above the ship. Without purpose of its own, but obedient to the laws of Mr. Newton and to the wishes of its makers, it came on inexorably. It was a sleek aluminum cylinder, glinting in the sunlight it had just recently entered. On one end was a rocket-motor, now silent but still warm with the memory of flaming gas that had poured forth from it only minutes ago. On the other end was a sleek aerodynamic shape, the product of thousands of hours of design work. It was designed to enter the atmosphere at meteoric speed, but without burning up. It was intended to survive the passage through the air and convey its contents intact to the ground. The contents might have been virulent bacteria or toxic gas, according to the intentions of its makers. Among its brothers elsewhere in the sky this morning, there were such noxious loads. This one, however, was carrying the complex mechanism of a hydrogen bomb. Its destination was an American city; its object to replace that city with an expanding cloud of star-hot gas.
* * * * *
Suddenly the sleek cylinder disappeared in a puff of smoke, which quickly dissipated in the surrounding vacuum. What had been a precisely-built rocket had been reduced, by carefully-placed charges of explosive, to a collection of chunks of metal. Some were plates from the skin and fuel tanks. Others were large lumps from the computer-banks, gyro platform, fuel pumps, and other more massive components. This was not wanton destruction, however. It was more careful planning by the same brains which had devised the missile itself. To a radar set on the ground near the target, each fragment was indistinguishable from the nose cone carrying the warhead. In fact, since the fragments were separating only very slowly, they never would appear as distinct objects. By the time the cloud of decoys entered the atmosphere, its more than two dozen members would appear to the finest radar available on the ground as a single echo twenty-five miles across. It would be a giant haystack in the sky, concealing the most deadly needle of all time. No ground-controlled intercept scheme had any hope of selecting the warhead from among that deceptive cloud and destroying it.
The cloud of fragments possessed the same trajectory as the missile originally had. At the rate it was overtaking RI 276, it would soon pass the ship by. The autopilot of RI 276 had no intention of letting this happen, of course. At the correct instant, stage two thundered into life, and Harry Lightfoot was again smashed back into his acceleration couch. Almost absentmindedly, the ship continued to minister to his needs. Its attention was focused on its mission. After a while, the ground computer sent some instructions to the ship. The navigation computer converted these into a direction, and pointed a radar antenna in that direction. The antenna sent forth a stream of questing pulses, which quickly returned, confirming the direction and distance to the oncoming cloud of missile fragments. A little while later, fuel pumps began to whine somewhere in the tail of the ship. Then the acceleration dropped to zero as the second-stage thrust was terminated. There was a series of thumps as explosive bolts released the second stage. The whine of the pumps dropped in pitch as fuel gushed through them, and acceleration returned in a rush. The acceleration lasted for a few seconds, tapered off quickly, and ended. A light winked on on the instrument panel as the ship announced its mission was accomplished.
Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, felt a glow of satisfaction as he saw the light come on. He might not have reflexes fast enough to pilot the ship up here; he might not be able to survive the climb to intercept without the help of a lot of fancy equipment; but he was still necessary. He saw still one step ahead of this complex robot which had carried him up here. It was his human judgment and his ability to react correctly in an unpredictable situation which were needed to locate the warhead from among the cluster of decoys and destroy it. This was a job no merely logical machine could do. When all was said and done, the only purpose for the existence of this magnificent machine was to put him where he was now; in the same trajectory as the missile, and slightly behind it.
Harry Lightfoot reached for a red-handled toggle switch at the top of the instrument panel, clicked it from AUTO to MANUAL, and changed his status from passenger to pilot. He had little enough time to work. He could not follow the missile down into the atmosphere; his ship would burn up. He must begin his pull-out at not less than two hundred miles altitude. That left him one hundred eighty-three seconds in which to locate and destroy the warhead. The screen in the center of his instrument panel could show a composite image of the space in front of his ship, based on data from a number of sensing elements and detectors. He switched on an infrared scanner. A collection of spots appeared on the screen, each spot indicating by its color the temperature of the object it represented. The infrared detector gave him no range information, of course. But if the autopilot had done its job well, the nearest fragment would be about ten miles away. Thus even if he set off the enemy warhead, he would be safe. At that range the ship would not suffer any structural damage from the heat, and he could be down on the ground and in a hospital before any radiation effects could become serious.
He reflected quickly on the possible temperature range of the missile components. The missile had been launched from Central Asia, at night, in January. There was no reason to suppose that the warhead had been temperature-controlled during the pre-launch countdown. Thus it probably was at the ambient temperature of the launch site. If it had been fired in the open, that might be as low as minus 70° F. Had it been fired from a shelter, that might be as high as 70° F. To leave a safety margin, he decided to reject only those objects outside the range plus or minus 100° F. There were two fragments at 500° F. He rejected these as probably fragments of the engine. Six more exhibited a temperature of near minus 320° F. These probably came from the liquid oxygen tanks. They could be rejected. That eliminated eight of the objects on the screen. He had nineteen to go. It would be a lot slower for the rest, too.
* * * * *
He switched on a radar transmitter. The screen blanked out almost completely. The missile had included a micro-wave transmitter, to act as a jammer. It must have been triggered on by his approach. It obviously hadn't been operating while the ship was maneuvering into position. Had it been transmitting then, the autopilot would simply have homed on it. He switched the radar to a different frequency. That didn't work. The screen was still blank, indicating that the jammer was sweeping in frequency. He next tried to synchronize his radar pulses with the jammer, in order to be looking when it was quiet. The enemy, anticipating him, had given the jammer a variable pulse repetition rate. He switched off the transmitter, and scanned the radar antenna manually. He slowly swung it back and forth, attempting to fix the direction of the jammer by finding the direction of maximum signal strength. He found that the enemy had anticipated him again, and the jammer's signal strength varied. However, he finally stopped the antenna, satisfied that he had it pointed at the jammer. The infrared detector confirmed that there was something in the direction the antenna pointed, but it appeared too small to be the warhead.
He then activated the manual piloting controls. He started the fuel pumps winding up, and swung the ship to point normal to the line-of-sight to the jammer. A quick blast from the rockets sent the image of the jammer moving sideways across the screen. But, of greater importance, two other objects moved across the screen faster than the jammer, indicating they were nearer the ship than was the jammer. He picked the one which appeared the nearest to him, and with a series of maneuvers and blasts from the rockets placed the object between himself and the jammer. He switched the radar on again. Some of the jammer signal was still leaking through, but the object, whatever it was, made an effective shield. The radar images were quite sharp and clear.
He glanced at the clock. Nullifying the jammer had cost him seventy-five seconds. He'd have to hurry, in order to make up for that time. The infrared detector showed two targets which the radar insisted weren't there. He shifted radar frequency. They still weren't there. He decided they were small fragments which didn't reflect much radar energy, and rejected them. He set the radar to a linearly polarized mode. Eight of the targets showed a definite amplitude modulation on the echo. That meant they were rotating slowly. He switched to circular polarization, to see if they presented a constant area to the radar beam. He compared the echoes for both modes of polarization. Five of the targets were skin fragments, spinning about an axis skewed with respect to the radar beam. These he rejected. Two more were structural spars. They couldn't conceal a warhead. He rejected them. After careful examination of the fine structure of the echo from the last object, he was able to classify it as a large irregular mass, probably a section of computer, waving some cables about. Its irregularity weighed against its containing the warhead. Even if it didn't burn up in the atmosphere, its trajectory would be too unpredictable.
He turned to the rest of the targets. Time was getting short. He extracted every conceivable bit of information out of what his detectors told him. He checked each fragment for resonant frequencies, getting an idea of the size and shape of each. He checked the radiated infrared spectrum. He checked the decrement of the reflected radar pulse. Each scrap of information was an indication about the identity of the fragments. With frequent glances at the clock, constantly reminding him of how rapidly his time was running out, he checked and cross-checked the data coming in to him. Fighting to keep his mind calm and his thoughts clear, he deduced, inferred, and decided. One fragment after another, he sorted, discarded, rejected, eliminated, excluded. Until the screen was empty.
Now what? Had the enemy camouflaged the warhead so that it looked like a section of the missile's skin? Not likely. Had he made a mistake in his identification of the fragments? Possibly, but there wasn't time to recheck every fragment. He decided that the most likely event was that the warhead was hidden by one of the other fragments. He swung the ship; headed it straight for the object shielding him from the jammer, which had turned out to be a section from the fuel tank. A short blast from the rockets sent him drifting toward the object. One image on the screen broadened; split in two. A hidden fragment emerged from behind one of the ones he had examined. He rejected it immediately. Its temperature was too low. He was almost upon the fragment shielding him from the jammer. If he turned to avoid it, the jammer would blank-out his radar again. He thought back to his first look at the cloud of fragments. There had been nothing between his shield and the jammer. The only remaining possibility, then, was that the warhead was being hidden from him by the jammer itself. He would have to look on the other side of the jammer, using the ship itself as a shield.
He swung out from behind the shielding fragment, and saw his radar images blotted out. He switched off the radar, and aimed the ship slightly to one side of the infrared image of the jammer. Another blast from the rockets sent him towards the jammer. Without range information from the radar, he would have to guess its distance by noting the rate at which it swept across the screen. The image of the jammer started to expand as he approached it. Then it became dumbbell shaped and split in two.
As he passed by the jammer, he switched the radar back on. That second image was something which had been hidden by the jammer. He looked around. No other new objects appeared on the screen. This had to be the warhead. He checked it anyway. Temperature was minus 40° F. A smile flickered on his lips as he caught the significance of the temperature. He hoped the launching crew had gotten their fingers frozen off while they were going through the countdown. The object showed no anomalous radar behavior. Beyond doubt, it was the warhead.
Then he noted the range. A mere thirteen hundred yards! His own missile carried a small atomic warhead. At that range it would present no danger to him. But what if it triggered the enemy warhead? He and the ship would be converted into vapor within microseconds. Even a partial, low-efficiency explosion might leave the ship so weakened that it could not stand the stresses of return through the atmosphere. Firing on the enemy warhead at this range was not much different from playing Russian Roulette with a fully-loaded revolver.
Could he move out of range of the explosion and then fire? No. There were only twelve seconds left before he had to start the pull-out. It would take him longer than that to get to a safe range, get into position, and fire. He'd be dead anyway, as the ship plunged into the atmosphere and burned up. And to pull out without firing would be saving his awn life at the cost of the lives he was under oath to defend. That would be sheer cowardice.
* * * * *
He hesitated briefly, shrugged his shoulders as well as he could inside his flying suit, and snapped a switch on the instrument panel. A set of cross hairs sprang into existence on the screen. He gripped a small lever which projected up from his right armrest; curled his thumb over the firing button on top of it. Moving the lever, he caused the cross hairs to center on the warhead. He flicked the firing button, to tell the fire control system that this was the target. A red light blinked on, informing him that the missile guidance system was tracking the indicated target.
He hesitated again. His body tautened against the straps holding it in the acceleration couch. His right arm became rigid; his fingers petrified. Then, with a convulsive twitch of his thumb, he closed the firing circuit. He stared at the screen, unable to tear his eyes from the streak of light that leaped away from his ship and toward the target. The missile reached the target, and there was a small flare of light. His radiation counter burped briefly. The target vanished from the radar, but the infrared detector insisted there was a nebulous fog of hot gas, shot through with a rain of molten droplets, where the target had been. That was all. He had destroyed the enemy warhead without setting it off. He stabbed the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED button, and flicked the red-handled toggle switch, resigning his status as pilot. Then he collapsed, nerveless, into the couch.
The autopilot returned to control. It signaled the Air Defense network that this hostile track was no longer dangerous. It received instructions about a safe corridor to return to the ground, where it would not be shot at. As soon as the air was thick enough for the control surfaces to bite, the autopilot steered into the safe corridor. It began the slow, tedious process of landing safely. The ground was still a long way down. The kinetic and potential energy of the ship, if instantly transformed into heat, was enough to flash the entire ship into vapor. This tremendous store of energy had to be dissipated without harm to the ship and its occupant.
Major Harry Lightfoot, fighter pilot, lay collapsed in his couch, exhibiting somewhat less ambition than a sack of meal. He relaxed to the gentle massage of his gee-suit. The oxygen control winked reassuringly at him as it maintained a steady flow. The cabin temperature soared, but he was aware of it only from a glance at a thermometer; the air conditioning in his suit automatically stepped up its pace to keep him comfortable. He reflected that this might not be so bad after all. Certainly none of his ancestors had ever had this comfortable a ride home from battle.
After a while, the ship had reduced its speed and altitude to reasonable values. The autopilot requested, and received, clearance to land at its preassigned base. It lined itself up with the runway, precisely followed the correct glide-path, and flared out just over the end of the runway. The smoothness of the touchdown was broken only by the jerk of the drag parachute popping open. The ship came to a halt near the other end of the runway. Harry Lightfoot disconnected himself from the ship and opened the hatch. Carefully avoiding contact with the still-hot metal skin of the ship, he jumped the short distance to the ground. The low purr of a motor behind him announced the arrival of a tractor to tow the ship off the runway.
"You'll have to ride the tractor back with me, sir. We're a bit short of transportation now."
"O.K., sergeant. Be careful hooking up. She's still hot."
"How was the flight, sir?"
"No sweat. She flies herself most of the time."
THE END
REX EX MACHINA
By Frederic Max
The domination of the minds of tractable Man is not new. Many men have dreamed of it. Certainly some of them have tried. This man succeeded.
One final lesson--a dying man's last letter to his only son that completes the young man's education.
MY DEAR SON:--
The doctors have left and I am told that in a few hours I shall die. In my lifetime the world has progressed from the chaotic turmoil of the early Atomic era to the peacefulness and tranquility of our present age, and I die content.
For ten years I have instructed you in all that you will need for the future. One final lesson remains to be taught.
* * * * *
On the wall of my bedchamber hangs a citation "from a grateful government for services too secret to be herein set forth." In past years you have asked me repeatedly about this citation, but each time I have taken pains to avoid a direct answer. Now it is proper that you should know.
Forty years ago I was an obscure Army captain stationed at the Armed Forces Language School in Monterey, California. I had at that time just completed a tour of duty in Korea, a minor skirmish of that era, and despite an excellent reputation for resourcefulness, I had drawn Monterey as my next assignment. An aptitude for foreign languages had led to an instructorship in the Russian department with additional duties instructing in the Slavic tongues.
My life was pleasant and uneventful, and it was with mixed emotions that I received orders to report to Washington for a new duty assignment. The chain of events which precipitated those orders were to change the world....
For while you and I were playing on the lawn of our Monterey home, an unknown Hungarian physicist working under Russian supervision had made a startling discovery. Within a matter of days alarming rumors of his work reached Washington. Our embassies in Moscow and Belgrade reported furious activity in the field of psychic research and large-scale experiments in mass hypnosis. Four of us were selected to investigate the rumors. Before we could commence our undertaking, word reached Washington that the rumors were now actualities. A device capable of the mass hypnosis of great segments of the world's population was rapidly reaching perfection.
After three months of intensive grooming in the fields of physics and psychology, we four agents set out individually with orders to track down and destroy both the scientist and his machine. I never saw the other three again....
During the three months of schooling, other members of our vast intelligence organization had been engaged in laying the groundwork for our efforts. In December 1955, I slipped into Russia and took the place of a government official who felt that Western civilization offered greater reimbursement than Soviet Communism.
I entered into my new role with trepidation, but my fears were unfounded. Thanks to a remarkable resemblance (which was the original reason for my selection) and also due to a most thorough briefing, I found myself making the substitution with ease. I pride myself on the fact that by diligent application I was able to increase my worth to the Russian government to the extent that I was shortly able to secure my transfer to the psychological warfare section of the secret police. From there it was a simple procedure to have myself assigned to what was known as "Project Parchak."
The device was in its final stage of development; only the problem of increasing its effective range remained to be solved. Three weeks after my assignment to the project, its successful conclusion was accomplished.
In June 1956, the Russian government ordered me to a small house on the outskirts of Braila, Hungary, where I was to attend a private showing of the device. By design, I arrived one day early and made my way to the laboratory immediately. Dr. Michael Parchak, the inventor, stood facing me as I entered. On a table between us lay a small complicated mechanism resembling a radio transmitter. But it was infinitely more than that. The device was a thought generator capable of hypnotizing every thinking creature on the face of the earth. The power of infinite goodness or evil which the machine embodied was terrifying to consider.
I listened to Parchak's boasting with revulsion. Although he had the ability to work for the ultimate good of mankind, this creature intended, instead, to use his newly found power for selfish aggrandizement.
I drew him out, let him explain the inner workings of his device--and killed him. My orders were to destroy the machine. I disobeyed them. Utilizing the machine to make good my escape, I left Hungary and returned to the United States. The citation which you have seen was only one of the many honors which were bestowed upon me.
A few weeks later I resigned my commission and retired to a country hideaway to experiment further with the device I was supposed to have destroyed. The peace and tranquility in which we of the earth now live marked the successful culmination of my experiments.
You will find the machine walled up in the North alcove of my bedchamber.
Your education is now complete my son, use it well. Be kind to our slave peoples, the world is yours.
Your affectionate father,
FRANCIS I EMPEROR OF THE EARTH
DEAREST
BY H. BEAM PIPER
Colonel Ashley Hampton chewed his cigar and forced himself to relax, his glance slowly traversing the room, lingering on the mosaic of book-spines in the tall cases, the sunlight splashed on the faded pastel colors of the carpet, the soft-tinted autumn landscape outside the French windows, the trophies of Indian and Filipino and German weapons on the walls. He could easily feign relaxation here in the library of "Greyrock," as long as he looked only at these familiar inanimate things and avoided the five people gathered in the room with him, for all of them were enemies.
There was his nephew, Stephen Hampton, greying at the temples but youthfully dressed in sports-clothes, leaning with obvious if slightly premature proprietorship against the fireplace, a whiskey-and-soda in his hand. There was Myra, Stephen's smart, sophisticated-looking blonde wife, reclining in a chair beside the desk. For these two, he felt an implacable hatred. The others were no less enemies, perhaps more dangerous enemies, but they were only the tools of Stephen and Myra. For instance, T. Barnwell Powell, prim and self-satisfied, sitting on the edge of his chair and clutching the briefcase on his lap as though it were a restless pet which might attempt to escape. He was an honest man, as lawyers went; painfully ethical. No doubt he had convinced himself that his clients were acting from the noblest and most disinterested motives. And Doctor Alexis Vehrner, with his Vandyke beard and his Viennese accent as phony as a Soviet-controlled election, who had preempted the chair at Colonel Hampton's desk. That rankled the old soldier, but Doctor Vehrner would want to assume the position which would give him appearance of commanding the situation, and he probably felt that Colonel Hampton was no longer the master of "Greyrock." The fifth, a Neanderthal type in a white jacket, was Doctor Vehrner's attendant and bodyguard; he could be ignored, like an enlisted man unthinkingly obeying the orders of a superior.
"But you are not cooperating, Colonel Hampton," the psychiatrist complained. "How can I help you if you do not cooperate?"
Colonel Hampton took the cigar from his mouth. His white mustache, tinged a faint yellow by habitual smoking, twitched angrily.
"Oh; you call it helping me, do you?" he asked acidly.
"But why else am I here?" the doctor parried.
"You're here because my loving nephew and his charming wife can't wait to see me buried in the family cemetery; they want to bury me alive in that private Bedlam of yours," Colonel Hampton replied.
"See!" Myra Hampton turned to the psychiatrist. "We are persecuting him! We are all envious of him! We are plotting against him!"
"Of course; this sullen and suspicious silence is a common paranoid symptom; one often finds such symptoms in cases of senile dementia," Doctor Vehrner agreed.
Colonel Hampton snorted contemptuously. Senile dementia! Well, he must have been senile and demented, to bring this pair of snakes into his home, because he felt an obligation to his dead brother's memory. And he'd willed "Greyrock," and his money, and everything, to Stephen. Only Myra couldn't wait till he died; she'd Lady-Macbethed her husband into this insanity accusation.
"... however, I must fully satisfy myself, before I can sign the commitment," the psychiatrist was saying. "After all, the patient is a man of advanced age. Seventy-eight, to be exact."
Seventy-eight; almost eighty. Colonel Hampton could hardly realize that he had been around so long. He had been a little boy, playing soldiers. He had been a young man, breaking the family tradition of Harvard and wangling an appointment to West Point. He had been a new second lieutenant at a little post in Wyoming, in the last dying flicker of the Indian Wars. He had been a first lieutenant, trying to make soldiers of militiamen and hoping for orders to Cuba before the Spaniards gave up. He had been the hard-bitten captain of a hard-bitten company, fighting Moros in the jungles of Mindanao. Then, through the early years of the Twentieth Century, after his father's death, he had been that rara avis in the American service, a really wealthy professional officer. He had played polo, and served a turn as military attache at the Paris embassy. He had commanded a regiment in France in 1918, and in the post-war years, had rounded out his service in command of a regiment of Negro cavalry, before retiring to "Greyrock." Too old for active service, or even a desk at the Pentagon, he had drilled a Home Guard company of 4-Fs and boys and paunchy middle-agers through the Second World War. Then he had been an old man, sitting alone in the sunlight ... until a wonderful thing had happened.
"Get him to tell you about this invisible playmate of his," Stephen suggested. "If that won't satisfy you, I don't know what will."
* * * * *
It had begun a year ago last June. He had been sitting on a bench on the east lawn, watching a kitten playing with a crumpled bit of paper on the walk, circling warily around it as though it were some living prey, stalking cautiously, pouncing and striking the paper ball with a paw and then pursuing it madly. The kitten, whose name was Smokeball, was a friend of his; soon she would tire of her game and jump up beside him to be petted.
Then suddenly, he seemed to hear a girl's voice beside him:
"Oh, what a darling little cat! What's its name?"
"Smokeball," he said, without thinking. "She's about the color of a shrapnel-burst...." Then he stopped short, looking about. There was nobody in sight, and he realized that the voice had been inside his head rather than in his ear.
"What the devil?" he asked himself. "Am I going nuts?"
There was a happy little laugh inside of him, like bubbles rising in a glass of champagne.
"Oh, no; I'm really here," the voice, inaudible but mentally present, assured him. "You can't see me, or touch me, or even really hear me, but I'm not something you just imagined. I'm just as real as ... as Smokeball, there. Only I'm a different kind of reality. Watch."
The voice stopped, and something that had seemed to be close to him left him. Immediately, the kitten stopped playing with the crumpled paper and cocked her head to one side, staring fixedly as at something above her. He'd seen cats do that before--stare wide-eyed and entranced, as though at something wonderful which was hidden from human eyes. Then, still looking up and to the side, Smokeball trotted over and jumped onto his lap, but even as he stroked her, she was looking at an invisible something beside him. At the same time, he had a warm and pleasant feeling, as of a happy and affectionate presence near him.
"No," he said, slowly and judicially. "That's not just my imagination. But who--or what--are you?"
"I'm.... Oh, I don't know how to think it so that you'll understand." The voice inside his head seemed baffled, like a physicist trying to explain atomic energy to a Hottentot. "I'm not material. If you can imagine a mind that doesn't need a brain to think with.... Oh, I can't explain it now! But when I'm talking to you, like this, I'm really thinking inside your brain, along with your own mind, and you hear the words without there being any sound. And you just don't know any words that would express it."
He had never thought much, one way or another, about spiritualism. There had been old people, when he had been a boy, who had told stories of ghosts and apparitions, with the firmest conviction that they were true. And there had been an Irishman, in his old company in the Philippines, who swore that the ghost of a dead comrade walked post with him when he was on guard.
"Are you a spirit?" he asked. "I mean, somebody who once lived in a body, like me?"
"N-no." The voice inside him seemed doubtful. "That is, I don't think so. I know about spirits; they're all around, everywhere. But I don't think I'm one. At least, I've always been like I am now, as long as I can remember. Most spirits don't seem to sense me. I can't reach most living people, either; their minds are closed to me, or they have such disgusting minds I can't bear to touch them. Children are open to me, but when they tell their parents about me, they are laughed at, or punished for lying, and then they close up against me. You're the first grown-up person I've been able to reach for a long time."
"Probably getting into my second childhood," Colonel Hampton grunted.
"Oh, but you mustn't be ashamed of that!" the invisible entity told him. "That's the beginning of real wisdom--becoming childlike again. One of your religious teachers said something like that, long ago, and a long time before that, there was a Chinaman whom people called Venerable Child, because his wisdom had turned back again to a child's simplicity."
"That was Lao Tze," Colonel Hampton said, a little surprised. "Don't tell me you've been around that long."
"Oh, but I have! Longer than that; oh, for very long." And yet the voice he seemed to be hearing was the voice of a young girl. "You don't mind my coming to talk to you?" it continued. "I get so lonely, so dreadfully lonely, you see."
"Urmh! So do I," Colonel Hampton admitted. "I'm probably going bats, but what the hell? It's a nice way to go bats, I'll say that.... Stick around; whoever you are, and let's get acquainted. I sort of like you."
A feeling of warmth suffused him, as though he had been hugged by someone young and happy and loving.
"Oh, I'm glad. I like you, too; you're nice!"
* * * * *
"Yes, of course." Doctor Vehrner nodded sagely. "That is a schizoid tendency; the flight from reality into a dream-world peopled by creatures of the imagination. You understand, there is usually a mixture of psychotic conditions, in cases like this. We will say that this case begins with simple senile dementia--physical brain degeneration, a result of advanced age. Then the paranoid symptoms appear; he imagines himself surrounded by envious enemies, who are conspiring against him. The patient then withdraws into himself, and in his self-imposed isolation, he conjures up imaginary companionship. I have no doubt...."
In the beginning, he had suspected that this unseen visitor was no more than a figment of his own lonely imagination, but as the days passed, this suspicion vanished. Whatever this entity might be, an entity it was, entirely distinct from his own conscious or subconscious mind.
At first she--he had early come to think of the being as feminine--had seemed timid, fearful lest her intrusions into his mind prove a nuisance. It took some time for him to assure her that she was always welcome. With time, too, his impression of her grew stronger and more concrete. He found that he was able to visualize her, as he might visualize something remembered, or conceived of in imagination--a lovely young girl, slender and clothed in something loose and filmy, with flowers in her honey-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a pert, cheerful face, a wide, smiling mouth and an impudently up-tilted nose. He realized that this image was merely a sort of allegorical representation, his own private object-abstraction from a reality which his senses could never picture as it existed.
It was about this time that he had begun to call her Dearest. She had given him no name, and seemed quite satisfied with that one.
"I've been thinking," she said, "I ought to have a name for you, too. Do you mind if I call you Popsy?"
"Huh?" He had been really startled at that. If he needed any further proof of Dearest's independent existence, that was it. Never, in the uttermost depths of his subconscious, would he have been likely to label himself Popsy. "Know what they used to call me in the Army?" he asked. "Slaughterhouse Hampton. They claimed I needed a truckload of sawdust to follow me around and cover up the blood." He chuckled. "Nobody but you would think of calling me Popsy."
There was a price, he found, that he must pay for Dearest's companionship--the price of eternal vigilance. He found that he was acquiring the habit of opening doors and then needlessly standing aside to allow her to precede him. And, although she insisted that he need not speak aloud to her, that she could understand any thought which he directed to her, he could not help actually pronouncing the words, if only in a faint whisper. He was glad that he had learned, before the end of his plebe year at West Point, to speak without moving his lips.
Besides himself and the kitten, Smokeball, there was one other at "Greyrock" who was aware, if only faintly, of Dearest's presence. That was old Sergeant Williamson, the Colonel's Negro servant, a retired first sergeant from the regiment he had last commanded. With increasing frequency, he would notice the old Negro pause in his work, as though trying to identify something too subtle for his senses, and then shake his head in bewilderment.
One afternoon in early October--just about a year ago--he had been reclining in a chair on the west veranda, smoking a cigar and trying to re-create, for his companion, a mental picture of an Indian camp as he had seen it in Wyoming in the middle '90's, when Sergeant Williamson came out from the house, carrying a pair of the Colonel's field-boots and a polishing-kit. Unaware of the Colonel's presence, he set down his burden, squatted on the floor and began polishing the boots, humming softly to himself. Then he must have caught a whiff of the Colonel's cigar. Raising his head, he saw the Colonel, and made as though to pick up the boots and polishing equipment.
"Oh, that's all right, Sergeant," the Colonel told him. "Carry on with what you're doing. There's room enough for both of us here."
"Yessuh; thank yo', suh." The old ex-sergeant resumed his soft humming, keeping time with the brush in his hand.
"You know, Popsy, I think he knows I'm here," Dearest said. "Nothing definite, of course; he just feels there's something here that he can't see."
"I wonder. I've noticed something like that. Funny, he doesn't seem to mind, either. Colored people are usually scary about ghosts and spirits and the like.... I'm going to ask him." He raised his voice. "Sergeant, do you seem to notice anything peculiar around here, lately?"
The repetitious little two-tone melody broke off short. The soldier-servant lifted his face and looked into the Colonel's. His brow wrinkled, as though he were trying to express a thought for which he had no words.
"Yo' notice dat, too, suh?" he asked. "Why, yessuh, Cunnel; Ah don' know 'zackly how t' say hit, but dey is som'n, at dat. Hit seems like ... like a kinda ... a kinda blessedness." He chuckled. "Dat's hit, Cunnel; dey's a blessedness. Wondeh iffen Ah's gittin' r'ligion, now?"
* * * * *
"Well, all this is very interesting, I'm sure, Doctor," T. Barnwell Powell was saying, polishing his glasses on a piece of tissue and keeping one elbow on his briefcase at the same time. "But really, it's not getting us anywhere, so to say. You know, we must have that commitment signed by you. Now, is it or is it not your opinion that this man is of unsound mind?"
"Now, have patience, Mr. Powell," the psychiatrist soothed him. "You must admit that as long as this gentleman refuses to talk, I cannot be said to have interviewed him."
"What if he won't talk?" Stephen Hampton burst out. "We've told you about his behavior; how he sits for hours mumbling to this imaginary person he thinks is with him, and how he always steps aside when he opens a door, to let somebody who isn't there go through ahead of him, and how.... Oh, hell, what's the use? If he were in his right mind, he'd speak up and try to prove it, wouldn't he? What do you say, Myra?"
Myra was silent, and Colonel Hampton found himself watching her with interest. Her mouth had twisted into a wry grimace, and she was clutching the arms of her chair until her knuckles whitened. She seemed to be in some intense pain. Colonel Hampton hoped she were; preferably with something slightly fatal.
* * * * *
Sergeant Williamson's suspicion that he might be getting religion became a reality, for a time, that winter, after The Miracle.
It had been a blustery day in mid-January, with a high wind driving swirls of snow across the fields, and Colonel Hampton, fretting indoors for several days, decided to go out and fill his lungs with fresh air. Bundled warmly, swinging his blackthorn cane, he had set out, accompanied by Dearest, to tramp cross-country to the village, three miles from "Greyrock." They had enjoyed the walk through the white wind-swept desolation, the old man and his invisible companion, until the accident had happened.
A sheet of glassy ice had lain treacherously hidden under a skift of snow; when he stepped upon it, his feet shot from under him, the stick flew from his hand, and he went down. When he tried to rise, he found that he could not. Dearest had been almost frantic.
"Oh, Popsy, you must get up!" she cried. "You'll freeze if you don't. Come on, Popsy; try again!"
He tried, in vain. His old body would not obey his will.
"It's no use, Dearest; I can't. Maybe it's just as well," he said. "Freezing's an easy death, and you say people live on as spirits, after they die. Maybe we can always be together, now."
"I don't know. I don't want you to die yet, Popsy. I never was able to get through to a spirit, and I'm afraid.... Wait! Can you crawl a little? Enough to get over under those young pines?"
"I think so." His left leg was numb, and he believed that it was broken. "I can try."
He managed to roll onto his back, with his head toward the clump of pine seedlings. Using both hands and his right heel, he was able to propel himself slowly through the snow until he was out of the worst of the wind.
"That's good; now try to cover yourself," Dearest advised. "Put your hands in your coat pockets. And wait here; I'll try to get help."
Then she left him. For what seemed a long time, he lay motionless in the scant protection of the young pines, suffering miserably. He began to grow drowsy. As soon as he realized what was happening, he was frightened, and the fright pulled him awake again. Soon he felt himself drowsing again. By shifting his position, he caused a jab of pain from his broken leg, which brought him back to wakefulness. Then the deadly drowsiness returned.
* * * * *
This time, he was wakened by a sharp voice, mingled with a throbbing sound that seemed part of a dream of the cannonading in the Argonne.
"Dah! Look-a dah!" It was, he realized, Sergeant Williamson's voice. "Gittin' soft in de haid, is Ah, yo' ol' wuthless no-'count?"
He turned his face, to see the battered jeep from "Greyrock," driven by Arthur, the stableman and gardener, with Sergeant Williamson beside him. The older Negro jumped to the ground and ran toward him. At the same time, he felt Dearest with him again.
"We made it, Popsy! We made it!" she was exulting. "I was afraid I'd never make him understand, but I did. And you should have seen him bully that other man into driving the jeep. Are you all right, Popsy?"
"Is yo' all right, Cunnel?" Sergeant Williamson was asking.
"My leg's broken, I think, but outside of that I'm all right," he answered both of them. "How did you happen to find me, Sergeant?"
The old Negro soldier rolled his eyes upward. "Cunnel, hit war a mi'acle of de blessed Lawd!" he replied, solemnly. "An angel of de Lawd done appeahed unto me." He shook his head slowly. "Ah's a sinful man, Cunnel; Ah couldn't see de angel face to face, but de glory of de angel was befoh me, an' guided me."
They used his cane and a broken-off bough to splint the leg; they wrapped him in a horse-blanket and hauled him back to "Greyrock" and put him to bed, with Dearest clinging solicitously to him. The fractured leg knit slowly, though the physician was amazed at the speed with which, considering his age, he made recovery, and with his unfailing cheerfulness. He did not know, of course, that he was being assisted by an invisible nurse. For all that, however, the leaves on the oaks around "Greyrock" were green again before Colonel Hampton could leave his bed and hobble about the house on a cane.
Arthur, the young Negro who had driven the jeep, had become one of the most solid pillars of the little A.M.E. church beyond the village, as a result. Sergeant Williamson had also become an attendant at church for a while, and then stopped. Without being able to define, or spell, or even pronounce the term, Sergeant Williamson was a strict pragmatist. Most Africans are, even five generations removed from the slave-ship that brought their forefathers from the Dark Continent. And Sergeant Williamson could not find the blessedness at the church. Instead, it seemed to center about the room where his employer and former regiment commander lay. That, to his mind, was quite reasonable. If an Angel of the Lord was going to tarry upon earth, the celestial being would naturally prefer the society of a retired U.S.A. colonel to that of a passel of triflin', no-'counts at an ol' clapboard church house. Be that as it may, he could always find the blessedness in Colonel Hampton's room, and sometimes, when the Colonel would be asleep, the blessedness would follow him out and linger with him for a while.
* * * * *
Colonel Hampton wondered, anxiously, where Dearest was, now. He had not felt her presence since his nephew had brought his lawyer and the psychiatrist into the house. He wondered if she had voluntarily separated herself from him for fear he might give her some sign of recognition that these harpies would fasten upon as an evidence of unsound mind. He could not believe that she had deserted him entirely, now when he needed her most....
"Well, what can I do?" Doctor Vehrner was complaining. "You bring me here to interview him, and he just sits there and does nothing.... Will you consent to my giving him an injection of sodium pentathol?"
"Well, I don't know, now," T. Barnwell Powell objected. "I've heard of that drug--one of the so-called 'truth-serum' drugs. I doubt if testimony taken under its influence would be admissible in a court...."
"This is not a court, Mr. Powell," the doctor explained patiently. "And I am not taking testimony; I am making a diagnosis. Pentathol is a recognized diagnostic agent."
"Go ahead," Stephen Hampton said. "Anything to get this over with.... You agree, Myra?"
Myra said nothing. She simply sat, with staring eyes, and clutched the arms of her chair as though to keep from slipping into some dreadful abyss. Once a low moan escaped from her lips.
"My wife is naturally overwrought by this painful business," Stephen said. "I trust that you gentlemen will excuse her.... Hadn't you better go and lie down somewhere, Myra?"
She shook her head violently, moaning again. Both the doctor and the attorney were looking at her curiously.
"Well, I object to being drugged," Colonel Hampton said, rising. "And what's more, I won't submit to it."
"Albert!" Doctor Vehrner said sharply, nodding toward the Colonel. The pithecanthropoid attendant in the white jacket hastened forward, pinned his arms behind him and dragged him down into the chair. For an instant, the old man tried to resist, then, realizing the futility and undignity of struggling, subsided. The psychiatrist had taken a leather case from his pocket and was selecting a hypodermic needle.
Then Myra Hampton leaped to her feet, her face working hideously.
"No! Stop! Stop!" she cried.
Everybody looked at her in surprise, Colonel Hampton no less than the others. Stephen Hampton called out her name sharply.
"No! You shan't do this to me! You shan't! You're torturing me! you are all devils!" she screamed. "Devils! Devils!"
"Myra!" her husband barked, stepping forward.
With a twist, she eluded him, dashing around the desk and pulling open a drawer.
For an instant, she fumbled inside it, and when she brought her hand up, she had Colonel Hampton's .45 automatic in it. She drew back the slide and released it, loading the chamber.
Doctor Vehrner, the hypodermic in his hand, turned. Stephen Hampton sprang at her, dropping his drink. And Albert, the prognathous attendant, released Colonel Hampton and leaped at the woman with the pistol, with the unthinking promptness of a dog whose master is in danger.
Stephen Hampton was the closest to her; she shot him first, point-blank in the chest. The heavy bullet knocked him backward against a small table; he and it fell over together. While he was falling, the woman turned, dipped the muzzle of her pistol slightly and fired again; Doctor Vehrner's leg gave way under him and he went down, the hypodermic flying from his hand and landing at Colonel Hampton's feet. At the same time, the attendant, Albert, was almost upon her. Quickly, she reversed the heavy Colt, pressed the muzzle against her heart, and fired a third shot.
T. Barnwell Powell had let the briefcase slip to the floor; he was staring, slack-jawed, at the tableau of violence which had been enacted before him. The attendant, having reached Myra, was looking down at her stupidly. Then he stooped, and straightened.
"She's dead!" he said, unbelievingly.
Colonel Hampton rose, putting his heel on the hypodermic and crushing it.
"Of course she's dead!" he barked. "You have any first-aid training? Then look after these other people. Doctor Vehrner first; the other man's unconscious; he'll wait."
"No; look after the other man first," Doctor Vehrner said.
Albert gaped back and forth between them.
"Goddammit, you heard me!" Colonel Hampton roared. It was Slaughterhouse Hampton, whose service-ribbons started with the Indian campaigns, speaking; an officer who never for an instant imagined that his orders would not be obeyed. "Get a tourniquet on that man's leg, you!" He moderated his voice and manner about half a degree and spoke to Vehrner. "You are not the doctor, you're the patient, now. You'll do as you're told. Don't you know that a man shot in the leg with a .45 can bleed to death without half trying?"
"Yo'-all do like de Cunnel says, 'r foh Gawd, yo'-all gwine wish yo' had," Sergeant Williamson said, entering the room. "Git a move on."
He stood just inside the doorway, holding a silver-banded malacca walking-stick that he had taken from the hall-stand. He was grasping it in his left hand, below the band, with the crook out, holding it at his side as though it were a sword in a scabbard, which was exactly what that walking-stick was. Albert looked at him, and then back at Colonel Hampton. Then, whipping off his necktie, he went down on his knees beside Doctor Vehrner, skillfully applying the improvised tourniquet, twisting it tight with an eighteen-inch ruler the Colonel took from the desk and handed to him.
"Go get the first-aid kit, Sergeant," the Colonel said. "And hurry. Mr. Stephen's been shot, too."
"Yessuh!" Sergeant Williamson executed an automatic salute and about-face and raced from the room. The Colonel picked up the telephone on the desk.
The County Hospital was three miles from "Greyrock"; the State Police substation a good five. He dialed the State Police number first.
"Sergeant Mallard? Colonel Hampton, at 'Greyrock.' We've had a little trouble here. My nephew's wife just went juramentado with one of my pistols, shot and wounded her husband and another man, and then shot and killed herself.... Yes, indeed it is, Sergeant. I wish you'd send somebody over here, as soon as possible, to take charge.... Oh, you will? That's good.... No, it's all over, and nobody to arrest; just the formalities.... Well, thank you, Sergeant."
The old Negro cavalryman re-entered the room, without the sword-cane and carrying a heavy leather box on a strap over his shoulder. He set this on the floor and opened it, then knelt beside Stephen Hampton. The Colonel was calling the hospital.
"... gunshot wounds," he was saying. "One man in the chest and the other in the leg, both with a .45 pistol. And you'd better send a doctor who's qualified to write a death certificate; there was a woman killed, too.... Yes, certainly; the State Police have been notified."
"Dis ain' so bad, Cunnel," Sergeant Williamson raised his head to say. "Ah's seen men shot wuss'n dis dat was ma'ked 'Duty' inside a month, suh."
Colonel Hampton nodded. "Well, get him fixed up as best you can, till the ambulance gets here. And there's whiskey and glasses on that table, over there. Better give Doctor Vehrner a drink." He looked at T. Barnwell Powell, still frozen to his chair, aghast at the carnage around him. "And give Mr. Powell a drink, too. He needs one."
He did, indeed. Colonel Hampton could have used a drink, too; the library looked like beef-day at an Indian agency. But he was still Slaughterhouse Hampton, and consequently could not afford to exhibit queasiness.
It was then, for the first time since the business had started that he felt the presence of Dearest.
"Oh, Popsy, are you all right?" the voice inside his head was asking. "It's all over, now; you won't have anything to worry about, any more. But, oh, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do it!"
"My God, Dearest!" He almost spoke aloud. "Did you make her do that?"
"Popsy!" The voice in his mind was grief-stricken. "You.... You're afraid of me! Never be afraid of Dearest, Popsy! And don't hate me for this. It was the only thing I could do. If he'd given you that injection, he could have made you tell him all about us, and then he'd have been sure you were crazy, and they'd have taken you away. And they treat people dreadfully at that place of his. You'd have been driven really crazy before long, and then your mind would have been closed to me, so that I wouldn't have been able to get through to you, any more. What I did was the only thing I could do."
"I don't hate you, Dearest," he replied, mentally. "And I don't blame you. It was a little disconcerting, though, to discover the extent of your capabilities.... How did you manage it?"
"You remember how I made the Sergeant see an angel, the time you were down in the snow?" Colonel Hampton nodded. "Well, I made her see ... things that weren't angels," Dearest continued. "After I'd driven her almost to distraction, I was able to get into her mind and take control of her." Colonel Hampton felt a shudder inside of him. "That was horrible; that woman had a mind like a sewer; I still feel dirty from it! But I made her get the pistol--I knew where you kept it--and I knew how to use it, even if she didn't. Remember when we were shooting muskrats, that time, along the river?"
"Uhuh. I wondered how she knew enough to unlock the action and load the chamber." He turned and faced the others.
Doctor Vehrner was sitting on the floor, with his back to the chair Colonel Hampton had occupied, his injured leg stretched out in front of him. Albert was hovering over him with mother-hen solicitude. T. Barnwell Powell was finishing his whiskey and recovering a fraction of his normal poise.
"Well, I suppose you gentlemen see, now, who was really crazy around here?" Colonel Hampton addressed them bitingly. "That woman has been dangerously close to the borderline of sanity for as long as she's been here. I think my precious nephew trumped up this ridiculous insanity complaint against me as much to discredit any testimony I might ever give about his wife's mental condition as because he wanted to get control of my estate. I also suppose that the tension she was under here, this afternoon, was too much for her, and the scheme boomeranged on its originators. Curious case of poetic justice, but I'm sorry you had to be included in it, Doctor."
"Attaboy, Popsy!" Dearest enthused. "Now you have them on the run; don't give them a chance to re-form. You know what Patton always said--Grab 'em by the nose and kick 'em in the pants."
Colonel Hampton re-lighted his cigar. "Patton only said 'pants' when he was talking for publication," he told her, sotto voce. Then he noticed the unsigned commitment paper lying on the desk. He picked it up, crumpled it, and threw it into the fire.
"I don't think you'll be needing that," he said. "You know, this isn't the first time my loving nephew has expressed doubts as to my sanity." He sat down in the chair at the desk, motioning to his servant to bring him a drink. "And see to the other gentlemen's glasses, Sergeant," he directed. "Back in 1929, Stephen thought I was crazy as a bedbug to sell all my securities and take a paper loss, around the first of September. After October 24th, I bought them back at about twenty per cent of what I'd sold them for, after he'd lost his shirt." That, he knew, would have an effect on T. Barnwell Powell. "And in December, 1944, I was just plain nuts, selling all my munition shares and investing in a company that manufactured baby-food. Stephen thought that Rundstedt's Ardennes counter-offensive would put off the end of the war for another year and a half!"
"Baby-food, eh?" Doctor Vehrner chuckled.
Colonel Hampton sipped his whiskey slowly, then puffed on his cigar. "No, this pair were competent liars," he replied. "A good workmanlike liar never makes up a story out of the whole cloth; he always takes a fabric of truth and embroiders it to suit the situation." He smiled grimly; that was an accurate description of his own tactical procedure at the moment. "I hadn't intended this to come out, Doctor, but it happens that I am a convinced believer in spiritualism. I suppose you'll think that's a delusional belief, too?"
"Well...." Doctor Vehrner pursed his lips. "I reject the idea of survival after death, myself, but I think that people who believe in such a theory are merely misevaluating evidence. It is definitely not, in itself, a symptom of a psychotic condition."
"Thank you, Doctor." The Colonel gestured with his cigar. "Now, I'll admit their statements about my appearing to be in conversation with some invisible or imaginary being. That's all quite true. I'm convinced that I'm in direct-voice communication with the spirit of a young girl who was killed by Indians in this section about a hundred and seventy-five years ago. At first, she communicated by automatic writing; later we established direct-voice communication. Well, naturally, a man in my position would dislike the label of spirit-medium; there are too many invidious associations connected with the term. But there it is. I trust both of you gentlemen will remember the ethics of your respective professions and keep this confidential."
"Oh, brother!" Dearest was fairly hugging him with delight. "When bigger and better lies are told, we tell them, don't we, Popsy?"
"Yes, and try and prove otherwise," Colonel Hampton replied, around his cigar. Then he blew a jet of smoke and spoke to the men in front of him.
"I intend paying for my nephew's hospitalization, and for his wife's funeral," he said. "And then, I'm going to pack up all his personal belongings, and all of hers; when he's discharged from the hospital, I'll ship them wherever he wants them. But he won't be allowed to come back here. After this business, I'm through with him."
T. Barnwell Powell nodded primly. "I don't blame you, in the least, Colonel," he said. "I think you have been abominably treated, and your attitude is most generous." He was about to say something else, when the doorbell tinkled and Sergeant Williamson went out into the hall. "Oh, dear; I suppose that's the police, now," the lawyer said. He grimaced like a small boy in a dentist's chair.
Colonel Hampton felt Dearest leave him for a moment. Then she was back.
"The ambulance." Then he caught a sparkle of mischief in her mood. "Let's have some fun, Popsy! The doctor is a young man, with brown hair and a mustache, horn-rimmed glasses, a blue tie and a tan-leather bag. One of the ambulance men has red hair, and the other has a mercurochrome-stain on his left sleeve. Tell them your spirit-guide told you."
The old soldier's tobacco-yellowed mustache twitched with amusement.
"No, gentlemen, it is the ambulance," he corrected. "My spirit-control says...." He relayed Dearest's descriptions to them.
T. Barnwell Powell blinked. A speculative look came into the psychiatrist's eyes; he was probably wishing the commitment paper hadn't been destroyed.
Then the doctor came bustling in, brown-mustached, blue-tied, spectacled, carrying a tan bag, and behind him followed the two ambulance men, one with a thatch of flaming red hair and the other with a stain of mercurochrome on his jacket-sleeve.
For an instant, the lawyer and the psychiatrist gaped at them. Then T. Barnwell Powell put one hand to his mouth and made a small gibbering sound, and Doctor Vehrner gave a faint squawk, and then both men grabbed, simultaneously, for the whiskey bottle.
The laughter of Dearest tinkled inaudibly through the rumbling mirth of Colonel Hampton.
The End
SORRY: Wrong Dimension
BY ROSS ROCKLYNNE
So the baby had a pet monster. And so nobody but baby could see it. And so a couple of men dropped out of thin air to check and see if the monster was licensed or not. So what's strange about that?
Baby didn't cry all day, because he had a monster for a playmate. But I didn't know he had a playmate, and much less did I know it was a monster. The honest truth is that for the first time since baby was born, I had my nerves under control, and I didn't dare investigate why he wasn't crying. I got all the ironing done--all of it, mind you--and I got Harry's work-clothes mended and I also read three installments of a Saturday Evening Post serial I'd been saving. And besides this Mabel, my neighbor, and I had a couple or three cups of coffee. We also had a giggling fit. I remember once we went off into hysterics at the picture of ourselves we had--two haggard old wrecks of women, worn out at twenty-three from too much work around the house. "But thank Heavens baby hasn't cried all day!" I gurgled when we came out of it.
"Neither has mine," said Mabel, who isn't due for six months.
"Mabel, honest, you kill me," I said, "and excuse me while I comb my messy hair--because I'm not a wreck. Harry said so. He says I'm still the best hunk of female pulchritude he's met since high school--and we've been married two years!"
* * * * *
I went into the bathroom leaving Mabel choking hysterically behind me. When I came out of the bathroom, she was hysterical but in a different way. She'd discovered why Harry, Jr., wasn't crying. She'd been in the nursery. Her face was white as an egg-shell.
"He's playing with something," she chattered. "It's alive. I heard it cooing back."
I ran three steps to baby's crib ... one on the corner of Little Jack Horner, one on the sheep of Little Bo Peep, one on the cupboard of Old Mother Hubbard. "Baby!" I almost screamed. But baby cooed and gurgled and laughed and rocked back and forth on his diapers. He was playing with his teething ring, but something was trying to jerk the teething ring out of his hands. And baby liked it.
Baby lost his hold on the teething ring, and fell on his back. The teething ring stayed up in the air and then by itself moved toward baby's waving hands and let him get a hold of it.
Mabel screeched through her teeth, "Baby's got it, the monster's got it, now baby's got it!" She began to collapse.
"Don't faint," I snapped, "and don't let's play tennis." I was shaking. I reached into the crib. My hands closed around something that put ice-water in my vertebrae. It was a monster.
"It's got fur!" I whispered. I felt some more. "And clammy scales!" I lifted it out of the crib. "And a trunk!" I was determined to save baby. Baby cried!
* * * * *
We got some chairs and sat there for ten minutes close together while baby played with the invisible monster. "I don't know what to do!" I said. "It's alive. Maybe it's poisonous. But it's friendly. Maybe it's another baby!"
"From another dimension," said Mabel.
"Rot," I said; I think I picked that up from the detective in the Saturday Evening Post serial. "Let's keep our heads."
"If baby keeps his," said my friend Mabel.
That got me. "I've got to call Harry," I chattered. "They don't like him to be called at work, but I've got to call him."
"You'll just worry him," said Mabel. "Call the police."
"No!" I said. I felt like crying myself. Baby was so happy. Maybe the baby monster was happy, too. The police would do something awful to it. But what about my maternal instinct? Something told me I simply had to save my baby! "I've got to call Harry," I insisted, and I went to the 'phone.
The dial tone sounded peculiar, I remember, but I called Harry's place of employment. A brisk female voice cut in:
"What number are you calling, please?"
"CHarlemont 7-890," I whispered.
"Sorry. You must have the wrong dimension." There was a click as she disconnected. I sat like a statue. A haggard statue with a greasy housedress on. A statue that hadn't plucked its eyebrows in two months. I had a lot of nerve. I was a bad mother, and a poor mistress. And I had a swell husband, who could lie like a trooper. I wasn't any good, I was ugly, I was greasy. I cried. "Mabel," I choked.
It took her a while to get it out of me, and then her blue eyes flashed. "I told you!" she cried. "From another dimension!" In her broken-down green wedgies she clattered toward the door. I heard her fighting it. She couldn't get it open. Then she tried a window. It opened, but she couldn't stick her hand out. She flung herself around.
"Stella," she said, with a quiver of that good-looking short upper lip of hers, "we're trapped in. We're in the middle of some kind of fantasy. It's a crazy world we're living in, Stella. A-bombs and H-bombs and flying saucers and space-flight--it's all the fiction stuff coming true. Now we're lost in some other dimension, and I have to get dinner in the oven."
"Please," I mumbled. "Let's don't get desperate about the wrong things." I tried all the doors and windows in the house, and it was true. We were trapped in. There was some barrier surrounding the house. There wasn't anything to see outside except a kind of grey steam.
We went back to check on baby. He was still playing with the monster. I bent over the crib and held a fluffy, fifty-cent toy bear out. The baby monster took it invisibly out of my hand. He shoved it at baby. Baby squealed so darned happily. And I began to get some perspective.
"Suspicion is wrong," I told Mabel. "All the time. That's what that article we read a couple months ago in Your World said. Remember you and I decided we'd never be suspicious. Maybe that's the reason we're happy--if dirty. We don't suspect anybody of anything if we can help it--and now's no time to start. The monster is baby's friend."
* * * * *
Mabel shuddered. "Okay," she said. "But I'm still worried about getting dinner in the oven. Bill's liable to--"
"Hah, now you're being suspicious," I said, lousy with virtue. "Quit worrying. I'm going to call Harry again." This time I was a lot calmer. I decided to trust the universe a little more. I dialed Harry's number again. A scratchy male voice answered:
"Sorry, dis dimension is in use. Would ya please get off da line?"
I dug a few trenches and established a line of fire.
"Listen," I said. "I'm in trouble."
"A dame," he said wonderingly.
"Yeah, a dame," I cried. "What's so unusual about a dame? Why does every male in Kingdom Come get that note in his voice when he talks with a dame? Sure I'm a dame, a good-looking dame! I'd like to punch you in the eye to prove it!"
He laughed. He must have turned away from the 'phone. "It's a dame."
"Okay, find out what she wants."
"Spill it," he said into the 'phone. I spilled it. "What's that address again?" he asked. I told him. "Naw, naw," he said impatiently. "The planet. The planet. And the year." I told him.
He must have turned away from the 'phone again, because I heard him say off-stage, "They're only ten years away." I was numb. He came back on the line. "And what's dis about a baby monster? Fur? Scales? A trunk? The size of Harry, Jr.? Ma'am, we'll be there in a jiff," and he hung up.
Mabel was nervously hanging on my ear, but I didn't get a chance to answer her questions. The door in the living room opened and they walked in.
For a second I saw a ship that looked like a cake-pan, hanging in the grey steam. Then they closed the door and grinned at us. Instinctively, Mabel and I tried to shrink our bust-lines.
"Hello," said the tall one. He scratched at his hairy chest and grinned wider. He was carrying a piece of machinery that looked like a camera on a tripod. "Lemme introduce myself," he said. "Jake Comstock. We come over to do you dames a favor. We'll kick you back where you belong."
"Yeah," I said, "I'll bet."
"And this here is Beany Rocine. He's my partner. We--uh--work together."
"Hi dere," said Beany. "Where's da monster?"
"Introductions," said Jake, casting him a hard look. "Manners."
So I introduced us. "I'm Mrs. Weaver," I said. "And this is my neighbor, Mrs. Aspectia."
"Pleased ta meetcha, girls," grinned Jake. "You, Blondie," he was looking at me, "you must be the one talked on the 'phone. I liked the way you handled Beany. Real cute." He dropped the tripod thing in a corner, and sidled toward me. "Now where's this monster?" he asked, slipping his hand around my bare arm and grinning down at me.
* * * * *
I knew better than to play rough, so I just looked down at his hand, and didn't stop looking at it until he took it away. He lost a lot of his grin. "So where is it?" he said, his voice turning hard and unpleasant.
"Don't worry about that," I said. "Matter of fact, I'm getting so the monster doesn't worry me. He's been playing with baby all day and baby hasn't objected. The main thing I'd like you gentlemen to do for us is to get busy moving us back to our own dimension."
"That's right," said Mabel, her hands on her hips. "And let us know right now what the charges are going to be, if any."
"No charge," said the runt Beany, staring fascinated at her legs. "'Cept we're taking da monster wit' us. Real expensive, them monsters. Drinkos, they're called. Dey get lost in da dimensions now and then. Picked one up on Pluto fifty years or so acome--or ago."
"Ago?" I said.
"Acome," he corrected.
"Listen," I said, making up my mind. "You can't have the monster. He's kept baby happy all day. But I'll tell you what I'll do. Tell me what he eats and what to do for him and I'll keep him. I've got twenty-five dollars in poker winnings you can have. Okay--Jake?"
Jake broke out laughing. "You kids are terrific," he said. "You don't know what the score is. You're cute!"
"Thanks," I said bitterly. "You restore my confidence. I feel myself blooming under your hungry gaze."
"Those Drinkos are worth a couple million credits, is what I'm getting at, and you offer us a stinkin' twenty-five dollars. Tell you what, Blondie." He winked at me. "You kids are over-worked. One look and you can tell that. Well, Beany and me have got a little cabin up on Dimension-L, cut off from everything. The four of us can go there and have a fine old time. We could stay there a month, and still get you back here in time to kiss your husbands when they get in from work. Whaddya say, Blondie? And you can keep the Drinko!"
"We are accepting no propositions this week," said Mabel with dignity.
"Ah-h, a coupla kill-joys," growled Beany, wandering off toward the hall.
Mabel looked at me and then picked up a vase off the mantle over the fire-place. I gave her the nod. "Stay away from that Drinko," she warned Beany, "or I'll let you have it."
Beany was annoyed. He stopped, looking imploringly at Jake. Jake giggled as if the whole thing tickled his sense of humor, and walked cat-footed toward Mabel. She let go the vase with a right-handed swing. He had his right arm out stiff in front of him, though, and the vase shied off and smashed against the television set. Then he grabbed Mabel in a bear hug.
That set me off. I had a yearning for Harry, then. He would have laid these mugs out. And that's all they were--mugs, cheap crooks. I hopped on one leg, yanking off one of my oxfords. I brought the heel down on Jake's curly head. But it didn't do a thing for him, except make him mad. He brought his arm back, cursing at me. It caught me on my lipstick. I remember being surprised that he was actually knocking me out. But that's what he did.
* * * * *
When I woke up, the first thing I knew was that Harry, Jr., was screaming. I groggily stood up, and stepped over Mabel, who was just beginning to moan. I went to the nursery and grabbed up my baby. "Don't cry," I begged him. "Don't be mad. I'll get your Drinko back. Those dirty thieves, I'll get it back." I held him under one arm, his pants dripping. I think I looked like a Pekinese, with my hair over my eyes. I went to the 'phone, dialed Harry's number, and got the same routine.
"I don't have the wrong dimension," I cried before the operator could hang up. "This is an emergency. A couple of crooks stole my Drinko. Please get me the dimension-police."
"You have a Drinko?" the operator asked cautiously. "There must be some mistake. You are calling from Earth? From 1954? I am sorry. Congress ruled Earth 1954 could not be connected with the dimension-system. It would be impossible for you to own a Drinko."
"Some crooks from 1964 stole my Drinko!" I insisted.
"One moment, please. The Supervisor informs me this is an unauthorized call. It will be necessary to conduct a police investigation." There were clickings, there were buzzings, there were groups of fuzzy, far-off voices, and finally the police came in.
"A couple of crooks stole my baby's Drinko!" I repeated loudly. "I demand my rights as a dimension-citizen!"
"Two thieves confiscated your Drinko," a dry voice said. "Very well. Describe them, please. Describe characteristic phrases, expressions, and voice-intonations also." I described them. "Very good. Did you say Earth 1954? Excellent. Only a matter of six dimensions and thirty years. We shall investigate immediately." He hung up.
"Hi, Stella," said Mabel, up on one elbow and looking fuzzily at me. "You think I'll get out of this in time to get Bill's dinner in the oven? Bill's so darned touchy about dinner."
"Teach him a lesson, then," I snapped, disgusted with her, and running to the door, because somebody was knocking there. "Train him. Disappoint him. Break his pattern. Don't have dinner. Good evening, gentlemen," I said as I opened the door. The police came in. They had Beany. They had Jake.
* * * * *
There were three police. The one in front, a young, nice-looking one, touched his cap and smiled quietly. "Here's your Drinko, ma'am," he said, but I already knew the Drinko was back. Harry, Jr., stopped crying. He gurgled happily. Somehow, I was willing to bet, he could see the Drinko. I put him on the floor and the policeman put the Drinko on the floor. It was beautiful, those squeals that came from my baby. The young policeman smiled again, a quiet, tanned smile.
"We want to thank you, ma'am. These two are the worst criminals in the dimension-system. I want you to know you may have the Drinko as a reward for your part in apprehending them. Also, I wish to say that I admire you for your trippo in pretending to be a dimension-citizen, when, of course, you are not."
"Trippo?"
"Spunk, if you prefer."
"Well, I had to get my baby's Drinko back," I said.
"Naturally," he smiled. "Drinkos make wonderful pets. The day may come when Earth 1954 will be connected with dimension-system--and then more Drinkos will be available."
"Can't we," I asked, "just stay alone in our quiet nook of space?"
"My thought, too," said Mabel, getting to her feet at last and throwing her hair back. "And is there any chance of getting out of here? It's exciting, thrilling, and romantic, but Bill still has to eat."
"Immediately, Madam! It is merely a matter of disengaging the chrono-beam, which happened to become tangled, in space-time, with the gravitonic structure of the neutronic chrono-field."
"Well!" said Mabel. "That explains it! And so clearly!"
They set up an instrument that looked like the one Jake and Beany had. They sighted along the diagonals of the room and pressed buttons. Then they opened the door. "In two minutes, ma'am," the smiling cop said. "Good day. It is my hope that we shall meet again." They disappeared out the door. Sure enough, there was a cake-pan ship hanging in the grey steam. They piled into it and the ship moved off, wobbling, until I couldn't see it any more.
A minute later, the grey steam melted away and so did Mabel.
Harry came home on schedule. "Baby has hardly cried all day!" I told him happily. "What a relief! I got a lot of your old clothes mended and I read three installments of the Saturday Evening Post serial."
"Fine!" said Harry, looking around. "What else happened?"
"Not much," I said, deciding to break it to him gradually. "Except we've got a Drinko." I took him into the nursery. Baby was sound asleep. I supposed the Drinko was, too. "There he is," I said, pointing to the depression at the foot of the crib. "That's the Drinko." I told Harry the whole story. He listened with a straight face.
"Well!" he said. "What thrilling adventures you have. Tell me, isn't this sort of thing sometimes too exciting?"
"Not at all," I said, deciding to feed his stomach before I really tried to convince him. "It all comes under the heading of the drab, routine duties of a housewife. Come on now, dinner's ready."
THE SECOND VOICE
by Mann Rubin
Spud, world-famous dummy, talks to Mars with surprising results.
Crawford completed the rehearsal in less than an hour. He listened to the orchestra run through its selections, okayed the song the guest vocalist had chosen, then finished up with a long dialogue between Spud and himself. When it was over he checked timing with the program director, made a few script changes and conferred briefly with a Special Service Officer about the number of troops the auditorium could hold. Everything was running smoothly. It was going to be a neat, action-packed show.
Backstage he looked at his watch. He had almost two hours before the regular show began and he was restless. Two hours at Harlow Field could seem like two years. Guards and restrictions all over the place.
Harlow Field was the largest experimental base in the world, a veritable garden of atoms, the proving grounds for every secret weapon ever imagined. The security and the tight regulations gave Crawford the jitters on each of his visits.
He smoked a cigarette and tried making small talk with some of the soldiers on backstage detail. He posed for a picture and gave an interview to a reporter from an army newspaper, then excused himself and went to his dressing room with Spud propped in the crook of his arm.
He was used to it now; the applause, the audiences, the pictures, the autographs, the fuss. Everywhere the response was the same. They had either seen him in the movies or on television or in the nightclubs, where he first broke in his act. Now they wanted to establish an identity with him, to touch the merchandise, to stand close so that they could write home about the visiting celebrity. Crawford was a realist. It was all part of being a name.
It had taken him just five years to make the big time. Five years of road shows, coast-to-coast tours, one-night stands and a dummy named Spud to make him the hottest ventriloquist in the business. His act was tight, well-paced and popular. He had a weekly radio show, a television program and a seven-year contract with a major Hollywood studio. He was riding high.
Still he hadn't forgotten the soldiers. Two months each year he took time off to travel the USO circuit. His agent tore his hair, reminding him of the financial losses, but the USO had given him his first break so he had always answered their call. He liked enthusiastic audiences and the cheering of laugh-hungry men made him happy. Entertainment was his business and he enjoyed exhibiting his talent. The wider the audience the better he liked it.
His dressing room was located back of the auditorium. He closed the door behind him, put Spud on a chair and began getting out of his rehearsal clothes. He lit a cigarette and looked at himself in the mirror. He was tired and needed a shave. In the last week the pace had been fast. The USO tour still had a few days to run, but he was looking forward to its end. A vacation, the luxury of relaxation would all be his then.
He opened a drawer of the dressing table and pulled out a bottle of Scotch. There were two hours to be killed before the show. He drank a shot and thought about it. A shower, a shave, a good dinner and a walk around the base would consume the time. After the show he would drive back to town and check in at a hotel for a good night's sleep.
He was putting the bottle back in the drawer when a knock sounded on the door. He said "Come in," thinking it was one of the cast and didn't turn around. He heard the door open, glanced into the mirror and glimpsed Colonel Meadows, the Commanding Officer of Harlow Field, and a man in civilian clothes he didn't recognize. He turned around, reached for a bathrobe.
"Don't mind us, Robbie," said the Colonel. "Just dropped by to say hello." He was a small, plump man and his face was always red and perspiring. Crawford knew him slightly from the other two times he had played Harlow Field, but this was the first time the Colonel had ever paid him a backstage visit.
"Got a fan here who wants to meet you," continued the Colonel. "Shake hands with Dr. Paul Shalt, one of our base scientists. He and I just caught your rehearsal. Fine, very fine."
The doctor's name struck a chord and Crawford dug deep until it focused. Dr. Paul Shalt was a physicist working with the army. He specialized in the development of radar, was the chief developer of the electrical detonator used in atomic bombs.
"I enjoyed your performance very much," said Dr. Shalt. "Your voice is extraordinary." He had a smooth, angular face, black hair and black, penetrating eyes. "Amazing range."
"Thanks," said Crawford.
"And the clearness of tone is phenomenal," said Dr. Shalt. "Has it always been like that?"
Crawford nodded. "When I was a kid it embarrassed me, my voice," he said, smiling. "A trick voice, everybody called it. But it's a definite asset to a practitioner of the art of ventriloquism."
"You should have seen Dr. Shalt while you were on stage," said Colonel Meadows, beaming at him. "He was running all over the auditorium testing your voice with one of his gadgets."
* * * * *
Crawford grinned. "I didn't realize I moved my audience so."
Dr. Shalt laughed. "What Colonel Meadows says is true. I'm very interested in your vocal range. While you rehearsed I tested the quality and sound of your tone." He stopped, looked around the room until he discovered Spud where Crawford had put him on the chair. He walked over to the dummy and touched the wooden head with his hand.
"Actually it's a second voice, that sound and vibration you use for Spud. It's perfect, perfect for what I need, that second voice."
Dr. Shalt put the dummy back in the position he had found him in, reached into his pocket and brought out a small glass-enclosed instrument which he held in front of him.
"Do you know what this is?" he asked, approaching the dressing table.
"Never saw it before," Crawford said, examining the gadget. A small arrow flickered nervously within a glass cage.
"It's called a Voice Oscillator," explained Dr. Shalt. "It's sensitive to the slightest tonal inflection. We use it to measure the pitch and volume of a human voice."
"What's all this got to do with me?" Crawford asked.
"This--we want to use the voice of Spud for an experiment. A very important experiment. With your permission, we'd like to do it immediately."
"I'm afraid that's impossible," said Crawford. "I have a show in about--"
"Our equipment is all set up," interrupted the doctor. "The entire test will take forty-five minutes. We'll have you back in no time."
Crawford frowned. He was tired and he'd looked forward to relaxing a while before the show. "Couldn't we make it some other time," he said.
* * * * *
The Colonel spoke then. "Robbie, do you remember reading four years ago that our radar system was able to beam signals to the moon and have them returned?"
"Sure," said Crawford. "It got a big play in all the newspapers."
"Well, our scientists are now ready to conduct a similar experiment," said Colonel Meadows. "This time to Mars."
"To Mars!" repeated Crawford, wondering what it had to do with him.
"Only this time we plan to send a voice, a human voice that can travel through interstellar space," said Dr. Shalt.
"But that's impossible!" Crawford exclaimed.
"With the average voice, yes," said Dr. Shalt. "Cosmic disturbances would drown out a normal voice amplified a thousand times beyond its regular frequency. But a voice in a higher octave--like your second voice ... Well, we believe there's a certain resonant intonation which can be curved and regulated in any direction, in the voice you use for your dummy."
Crawford nodded.
"Spud's voice contains that quality," continued Dr. Shalt. "I believe it can reach Mars and bounce back. I'm asking you to be the first man ever to throw his voice to another planet."
There was quiet for a moment when he finished. Crawford's cigarette had gone out and he relit it. The smoke steadied him. Outside, in the auditorium the orchestra had begun to rehearse again.
"Where's the station set-up?" asked Crawford finally.
"It's right here on the field, Robbie," Colonel Meadows said quickly. "We've had it under wraps for the last eight months. It'll be a tremendous thing if it works."
Crawford dragged on his cigarette a last time and stamped it out. He walked over to Spud, lifted the dummy into position in the crook of his arm.
"What do you say, Crawford?" asked Dr. Shalt. There was a note of urgency in his voice.
"I don't know," said Crawford slowly. "My crazy voice is my bread and butter. Can't you use somebody else? Somebody whose voice isn't his life?"
"We've wasted weeks testing every man on this field," said Dr. Shalt solemnly. "The average voice becomes static as soon as it gets past Earth's atmosphere. But your voice can break through. I've studied every vibration, every quiver of it. It bends and flexes with each cosmic pressure. You must let us try."
Crawford looked at Colonel Meadows.
"Robbie, I promise you there's no danger involved," the Colonel said. "There's been a great deal of time and effort put into this project and we'd like to see it work. This week Mars and Earth are the closest they'll be for the next three years, so it must be done now. It's your duty to help in this important project."
Crawford nodded. The matter of patriotism and duty had not occurred to him. "Of course, Colonel, I'll be glad to help."
He looked down at the dummy. "What do you say, Spud? Want to be the first voice to reach Mars?"
"Sounds crazy," came the high, squeaking reply. "But it ought to put us in the history books." Spud's glass eyes shifted to the other two men in the room and one lid winked. "Calling Mars! This is Spud O'Malley, old quiver voice himself, coming in for a landing."
"Good! You'll do it," said Dr. Shalt excitedly. "And if we succeed the publicity will be worldwide."
"Sure," said Crawford. "An actor likes publicity. But are you sure my voice won't be strained?"
"I'm sure," Dr. Shalt said. "You'll be talking into a microphone in the same tone you use for a broadcast. Nothing more."
"How long will it take?" asked Crawford.
Dr. Shalt checked his watch. "Fifteen minutes for the voice to reach Mars and fifteen minutes for its return." He took out a black notebook from his jacket pocket and began to outline the plan while Colonel Meadows put through a call to the laboratory.
Spud's voice was to be relayed directly to a giant amplifying unit which would project it into space. Those regulating the voice in the control room would hear nothing but vibrations because of the high frequency it would immediately attain while passing through. Only on its return from Mars would Spud's voice become audible on Earth. It sounded fantastic but Dr. Shalt spoke of it as if it were a certainty and Crawford knew he was recognized as a great scientist.
A few minutes later Colonel Meadows hung up the phone. He said excitedly, "Everything's set. All the equipment is ready and there's a command car waiting outside."
Crawford caught a quick glimpse of himself in the mirror. No shower, no shave, no quiet dinner, no walk; all that would have to come later. He'd been hooked. "I'm ready any time you are," he said. He folded Spud in his arms and followed the two men to the door.
They did not speak much in the car. The laboratory was on the Northern rim of the field, a ten-minute drive from the auditorium. Approaching the building, Crawford noticed the high radar towers and the steel fences surrounding its frame. They rode past three different guard posts and numerous military policemen before the car halted at the main entrance.
Immediately they were ushered into a small broadcasting studio which was soundproofed and closed off by a heavy metal door. This was Dr. Shalt's home grounds and he took charge.
A microphone had been set up and Dr. Shalt had Crawford test Spud's voice while a technician in the control booth measured it acoustically. After an exact tone had been determined for the amplification unit, Dr. Shalt briefed him on some details, patted him on the back and disappeared into the control booth followed by Colonel Meadows.
Crawford lit another cigarette and smoked nervously while he awaited the go-ahead signal. There was a dry tightness in his throat and he concentrated on relaxing his tension.
High on the studio wall a large clock hacked away at the seconds, and behind the glass façade of the control booth he could see Dr. Shalt and his assistant manipulating dials on an intricate panel. It was almost three minutes before he heard another sound beside the creak of his own impatient footsteps. Then Dr. Shalt's voice came on the feed-back, the speaker system connecting the studio with the booth.
"Crawford, talk into the mike when we flash you the sign. Keep talking for a minute. And remember--it's just another broadcast. Good luck."
Crawford nodded, deposited the cigarette in an ashtray. He moved into position and slid his fingers along the inner wires of Spud's back until they fitted into place. Spud's head came alive.
Dr. Shalt brought his right hand down in a long, sweeping motion. A bright red bulb above the control booth winked into life. Robbie Crawford went into his act.
Inside the booth Dr. Shalt, Colonel Meadows and a technician watched Crawford performing in pantomime and listened to the strange vibrations emanating from the speaker. They could distinguish no understandable sound for the amplifier had lifted the voice beyond human hearing as it released it to the stratosphere. They sat quietly, content to wait for the voice to return from its long, lonely journey.
Crawford spoke until he saw Dr. Shalt signal for a conclusion. A moment later the red bulb blinked out and the broadcast was ended. Crawford felt cold and his hands were perspiring freely. He saw the beaming face of Colonel Meadows motioning him to come inside the booth. He wiped his face, and coughed to relieve the tension in his throat.
The Colonel was the first to greet him as he entered the booth, and his handshake was enthusiastic and firm. Dr. Shalt remained bent over one of the instrument boards rotating a dial, but looked up and nodded excitedly.
"It will be another ten minutes," he said. "Sit down. I've sent out for some supper."
"How did it go?" Crawford asked.
"Good! Good! By now it's half way to its destination."
An orderly came in with a tray of sandwiches and coffee and for the next few minutes they ate and Dr. Shalt described the intricacies of the operation. The technician stayed glued to the receiver, earphones resting lightly across his head.
After ten minutes Dr. Shalt stood up and looked at his watch. "It's time," he said. "Turn up the resonator." He moved closer to the receiving set as the others gathered around him. The low hum of the monitor signal became louder as the technician switched on a new lever. The static emerging from the speaker thickened, obliterating all other noises. Another two minutes went by....
Crawford watched it all, aware of the tension and anxiety on each face, feeling the throbbing excitement himself. So they stood, tensely expectant, awaiting the return of his voice....
Suddenly the technician whispered, "I've got it! It's coming! I hear it returning!" He swung around, offering his earphones to Dr. Shalt, who grabbed for them hurriedly. The scientist raised the cups to his ear and waited. The room fell into deeper silence.
"Yes, yes, it's the voice! Turn up the resonator to full volume! We've got it! The voice is completing the circuit!" Dr. Shalt said tensely.
The technician turned another dial as far as it would go. The sound of the static rose to a roar. Then abruptly the static broke, died out and a strange new sound came in. It was Spud! Spud's voice creeping back from a trip to Mars, thirty-five million miles away!
"Hello.... This is the voice of Spud O'Malley. I speak to you from Harlow Field in the United States of America. My voice is being sent to you by a newly invented Amplification Unit developed by Dr. Paul Shalt at this experimental base. This is the first time such an operation has ever been tried. We extend our heartiest greetings, our deepest felicitations ..."
It went on, the high, squeaking voice, friendly, humorous, alive; sending back to them the words that Crawford had spoken into the microphone a few minutes before.
Crawford studied the faces of the other men. They had worked and planned a long time for this single moment, the realization of a long pursued dream. Colonel Meadows was rubbing his hands together gleefully. The voice was reaching its climax. Success was assured. History had been made!
There was a little silence as Spud finished speaking. The technician reached across leisurely to shut off the resonator.
Suddenly the voice started again. The technician's hand froze in mid-air. The same high, squeaking tone, the same inflections, the same pitch. But this time it was commanding, authoritative.
"This is Mars. We have received your voice. We know of you, know your language. We want you to know that we do not like intruders. We want no contact with you. Seek us out no more. The voice was received clearly. It fits our frequency well. We will keep it so that no more communication from you is possible. Let this be a warning. Stay away! We do not want you!"
The voice stopped and there was silence again. Then Colonel Meadows chuckled. "Very clever, Crawford! You really startled me for a moment."
"Yes," said Dr. Shalt, smiling. "So you made a little joke at the end. Very clever."
Crawford's back was to them as he stared at the loudspeaker. His face was contorted in a surprised grimace and the flesh was suddenly white and lifeless. He turned to face them, his body rigid and his mouth trembling as he whispered:
"That voice--that last voice--it wasn't mine! That wasn't me speaking!"
Dr. Shalt laughed. "Superb actor. A great performance, Mr. Crawford. We are most grateful to you."
"Robbie's a born comedian," added Colonel Meadows, his eyes sparkling with the humor of the situation. "Never misses a chance to clown."
"Don't you understand--it wasn't my voice!" screamed Crawford. He looked from one man to another, his eyes pleading for belief. "The second part was not mine!"
They stared at him, their smiles fading.
Colonel Meadows said, "What do you mean, Robbie?"
"Didn't you hear when I spoke? I never said those last things. Didn't you hear what I said?"
The technician answered him. "We didn't hear a thing, Mr. Crawford. The amplification was too high. It was nothing but mumbling when it passed through this room." He looked at Dr. Shalt for confirmation.
"I explained that to you myself," said the doctor. "You could have recited the Gettysburg Address and we'd never have known until it returned."
Crawford stared down at the limp form of Spud hanging across his arm. He ran a hand across his eyes, dropped the dummy onto the desk. Turning back to Dr. Shalt, he began to speak in a taut, controlled voice.
"Dr. Shalt, I swear to you that was not my voice at the end. I finished with a goodbye. The voice that spoke after that moment of silence was somebody else's voice. It's up to you to find out whose."
"Don't be absurd," said Dr. Shalt, irritably. "That was your voice, your pitch. The voice of your dummy, Spud." He wasn't going to be taken in by any warped sense of humor. Robbie Crawford was the best ventriloquist in America. He was also noted for his practical jokes. "An experiment of this magnitude shouldn't be treated so lightly," he added acidly.
"You've got to believe me!" screamed Crawford. His voice was choked and his pale face was glistening with perspiration. "It was someone else, imitating my ventriloquist voice! I swear it was not me!"
Colonel Meadows sat down abruptly. The technician ran from the booth and returned a moment later with a glass of water. Colonel Meadows motioned for him to give it to Crawford.
The ventriloquist gulped down the water, then went over and sat down beside the Colonel.
"Look," he said quietly. "I'm not joking and I'm not out of my head. It was a shock to hear a voice so like my own, to hear it threaten us, to know that it's traveling from another world. It's like hearing an echo that shouldn't be."
The Colonel exchanged a puzzled look with Dr. Shalt. After a moment the doctor reached down and picked the dummy up and brought it to Crawford.
"Crawford, listen to me." His voice was gentle, sympathetic. "Perhaps you've been working too hard. These USO trips, the rehearsal, the excitement of the last hour. Maybe you forgot what you said, or said more than you recall."
"I remember everything I said," Crawford said quietly. "I stopped when you gave me the signal. That voice came after I stopped. Can't you check--?"
A phone in the back of the control booth rang sharply and Colonel Meadows answered it. He spoke for a few moments, then hung up. "That was the stage manager calling from the main auditorium. You've got ten minutes before the show. How do you feel?"
Crawford blinked in surprise. He had almost forgotten the program. He tried to rise, found his legs trembling.
"He's in no condition to put on a show," said Dr. Shalt. "Better postpone it."
"No, no, I'm okay," protested Crawford, walking around the small floor, exercising his hands. "It's my show. They're waiting for me. Let's get going."
In the car, during the ride to the auditorium, he did not speak. He sat with Spud resting snugly against his chest, drumming his fingers on an arm rest while Colonel Meadows and Dr. Shalt talked, tried to convince him of the invalidity in his reasoning. There was a simple explanation for the voice; either he had forgotten part of his speech or maybe some amateur radio ham had somehow managed to pick up their signal and was playing a joke. He was too intelligent a man to be frightened by such coincidence. They spoke to him reassuringly all during the ride. At the stage door he thanked them, then went inside the auditorium to give his performance.
The ovation that greeted him was tremendous. The orchestra played his theme and an army announcer introduced him as the Number One ventriloquist in the world. He walked out slowly from the wing, waving and grinning at the audience with Spud sitting erect on his arm.
The soldiers roared and whistled as Spud's head spun, drooped and tilted in the opening routine that he was famous for. Crawford stopped in the middle of the stage, rested his foot on a chair that had been provided, sat Spud on his knee. The applause dwindled gradually and the other members of the cast moved into their positions. The army announcer walked forward to engage Crawford in conversation--to feed him questions that would be answered in Spud's high, squeaky voice.
"Hi, Robbie, Spud," said the announcer. "What took you so long getting here?"
It was Spud's answer. All eyes focused on the dummy's face as it bent forward and its mouth opened slowly. A wooden hand moved up and scratched a wooden head. But only a gurgle came out of the open mouth!
The announcer looked at Crawford, motioned him to speed up. "Speak up, Spud. Can't hear a word you're saying. No time to be bashful."
Again the dummy's mouth opened, the head bobbed and the eyes blinked. The gurgle became a half-strangled gasp. It whined unsteadily a few moments then broke off completely. The cast in the wings began to stir nervously. Crawford was obviously straining. A vein throbbed in the center of his forehead and his lips were tight over his teeth.
"Stage fright," he said in an aside to the audience. Turning his head aside, he coughed and cleared his throat and pretended to whisper with Spud. "Speak up, Pal. This is what we rehearsed for."
The mouth of the dummy flapped up and down without cadence. The soldiers snickered, squirmed restlessly. A sound started, a low, plaintive wail that broke into a dirge and finally into a wild shriek from Crawford's lips. He screamed and kicked over the chair his foot was balanced on. The dummy toppled to the floor.
"I can't! I can't! My voice is gone!" He was screaming and clutching at his throat, trying to loosen his collar. The curtains closed behind him as soldiers leaped to their feet all over the auditorium.
He screamed, "I've lost my second voice! They took it from me! The Martians stole my voice!"
The announcer grabbed his arms then and tried to lead him from the stage. Crawford shoved him away.
"They took it," cried Crawford. "No matter what they tell you, the Martians took Spud's voice. It fitted their frequency. They'll use it to reach Earth! I can't get it back!"
Colonel Meadows and several MPs who were stationed in the wings came out and dragged him from the platform.
The G.I. audience remained silent a moment longer, then broke into loud, nervous rumbling. Seconds later Colonel Meadows returned to the microphone and held up his hand until the confusion died down. He explained briefly about Dr. Shalt's experiment and how Crawford had been asked to participate. He told how a human voice had been sent to Mars for the first time and how Crawford had suffered a temporary shock on hearing his voice return from this journey.
He assured the audience that Crawford would receive the best medical care and would probably be back performing at the field in a few short weeks. He asked the soldiers to remain in their seats and let the show continue out of respect for a great performer.
The orchestra began the refrain of a popular song and the guest vocalist appeared wearing a white strapless evening gown. She blew warm, friendly kisses to the soldiers. The response she received was a healthy one.
And the show went on....
CREATURES OF VIBRATION
By Harl Vincent
Carr Parker sat day-dreaming at the Nomad's controls. More than a week of Earth time had passed since the self-styled "vagabonds of space" had left Europa, and now they were fast approaching the great ringed orb of Saturn with the intention of exploring her satellites.
Behind him, his Martian friend, Mado, was manipulating the mechanism of the rulden, that remarkable Europan optical instrument which Detis had installed in the vessel before they left. Mado was utterly fascinated by the machine, having spent most of his time during the voyage searching the surfaces of Saturn's moons for signs of human habitation. Now, as they headed directly for Titan, the sixth satellite, he was completely absorbed in an examination of the heavy cloud layer that covered it.
But Carr's thoughts were of his bride, who still slumbered in their stateroom amidships. In his bachelor days he never had imagined he could find such contentment as had come with his marriage to Ora. He had fought shy of the fair sex on Earth. Somehow, the women he knew back home had bored him; angling for a man's money and position, most of them, and incapable of giving real love and companionship in return for the luxuries they demanded. He was resigned to his single state.
But all that was changed by the little blue-eyed girl he had met in Paladar. She was a different sort; worth a hundred of those others and fulfilling to perfection the ideal he had always set up. On her world, Jupiter's satellite, Europa, he had neither wealth nor influence; he'd left these behind when he deserted Earth for a life of vagabondage among the stars. But, to the daughter of Detis, this lack meant less than nothing; his love, and hers, meant everything.
* * * * *
And, what a good sport she had been! When they were threatened by Rapaju and his minions; when they barely escaped being swallowed up by that monster of space which Mado had likened to the Sargasso Sea of Earth; when she herself proposed joining them in their rovings throughout the universe.
She was a companion of whom even the phlegmatic Martian was proud, she brought with her presence on the Nomad a subtle something that made of the coldly mechanical space-ship a thing of new beauty and a place of cheerfulness--a home. And, to think he had won her for his own. To think....
"Carr!" Mado's sharp exclamation startled him from his pleasant thoughts. "Come here and take a look at this," the Martian demanded, his voice betraying an excitement unusual for him. "Something is wrong on this satellite we're heading for."
Locking the controls in the automatic position, Carr turned to join his friend at the viewing-disk of the rulden. Mado had found an opening in the heavy cloud layer, and before them was an unobstructed view of a rugged countryside where huge boulders had been scattered by the mighty hand of creation and where the sun shone weakly on the rim of a yawning crater in which sulphurous vapors curled. They saw this strange land as from an altitude of a few hundred feet, though the Nomad was still more than a million miles from the satellite.
"What's wrong about that?" Carr grunted. "Excepting that it's just another of these barren and useless bodies that doesn't even provide us with an attracting interest."
"Wait," Mado replied, "You'll see in a moment. Something--"
* * * * *
At that instant there came a puff of blue flame from out the pit, carrying on its heated breath a drifting sheet of incandescence that fluttered and pulsated like a thing alive. Mado switched on the sound mechanism of the rulden and the roaring of the pillar of flame came to their ears. There were other sounds as well; the babble of alien voices and the rumble of drums.
Immediately the rough ground in the vicinity was filled with creatures of human mold, half naked red-skinned beings that rose up from behind the boulders and rushed toward the pit of fire and the uncanny heat mantle that wandered ghost-like along its rim. Two of them carried something between them, a struggling writhing something which they stood erect at the crater's edge. It was a girl!--a slim, bronzed figure that swayed there an instant uncertainly as the throb of the drums rose high and the voices of the assembled savages swelled in a monotony of exultant chanting.
"Good Lord!" Carr gasped. "A human sacrifice!"
A quick push, a piercing scream immediately drowned out by the cries of the multitude, and the girl was flung headlong into the welcoming folds of the white-hot ghost-mantle which hovered there like some greedy monster of the lava pools of Mercury. The thing closed in around the wildly struggling body, enwrapping it with exultant constrictions of its hell-born substance and diving, flapping, smoking heat devil, into the flame from whence it had sprung. Mado touched a lever with quick trembling fingers and the rulden's disk went blank.
* * * * *
Sickened by what they had seen, the two friends stared at one another, white-faced.
"No place for us," Mado said, after a moment. "Not with Ora."
"Right!" Carr agreed grimly. "But I'd like to get in close enough to see more of Titan. How high is this cloud layer?"
"About a mile above the surface. We can dive through and look them over; perhaps give them a taste of the disintegrator."
"Attaboy! You took the words out of my mouth. The devils! Who'd ever dream of such a horror in the twenty-fourth century--even out here?"
"What's the reason for this serious discussion?" The voice of Detis broke in on them from the door of the control room.
"Plenty!" Carr exclaimed. And the Europan listened gravely as he described the awful thing they had witnessed.
"I am not surprised," he said calmly, when the Terrestrial ended his recital. "There are certain emanations from the mother planet that most certainly will affect the mentality and baser instincts of a race living within their influence. I have been studying these vibrations for several hours."
They turned to the forward port as the scientist indicated the great orb of Saturn with its gleaming rings. Now, as they drew near to the enormous planet, it did indeed seem that there was a sinister quality in its shifting luminosity. Carr shivered, thinking of Ora.
"You mean," Mado asked, "that there are vibrations in the ether hereabouts that are set up electrically by the planet?"
"Precisely. Or rather I should say they are set up by the vast number of whirling particles of which its encircling rings are composed. The wave form propagated is of a characteristic that is in tune with those portions of the brain which control the savage impulses. We may certainly expect to find superstition-ridden ignorance and all manner of vice prevalent in the races of Titan."
"You think these vibrations will affect us?" Carr inquired anxiously.
"Not if we make our visit short. The intensity is quite low."
"It'll be a short visit, all right. We'll be in Titan's atmosphere in about forty minutes now, and, if I have my say, we'll be out of it and away again inside of an hour."
"Best thing you've said today," Mado approved. "But let's have another look in the rulden. We may find other gaps in the clouds."
* * * * *
The mechanism of the radio telescope whirred into life as he spoke and its disk shone bright with the reflected light of Titan as it pictured the body. The Nomad was speeding toward the ill-omened satellite at the rate of more than a thousand miles a second.
But the surface was nowhere visible and Mado adjusted the focus so that the view of the billowy cloud-covering fell rapidly away. Though actually they were approaching the satellite with tremendous velocity, it receded swiftly in the rulden's disk until the entire body showed as a perfect sphere of uniform brilliancy. All surface markings were concealed by the blanket of clouds.
"Just a moment, Mado," said Detis. "I believe I saw something."
The Martian pressed a button and the image was stationary. A tiny black spot had appeared near one edge of the satellite's disk and this now spread rapidly like a blot of spilled ink. Then it stretched out into a wriggling line that quickly streaked its way across the equator, completely banding the body as they watched. A moment it lay there like a great serpent encircling the globe, and then it vanished in a flash of intense light that left them blinking in amazement. It was as if a trail of gunpowder had been laid across the surface and then set off by a torch in the hand of some unseen giant of the cosmos. A strange electrical storm that agitated the cloud blanket mightily, then left it more densely closed in than before.
Through the forward port the satellite could be seen with the naked eye, growing larger now and resolving itself into a tiny globe. To Carr it seemed that the diminutive moon winked provocatively as he turned to regard it without the rulden's aid. Off to the west, Saturn and her rings almost filled the sky, and their baleful light shone cold and menacing against the black velvet of the heavens.
* * * * *
Mado took the controls when the Nomad entered the atmosphere of Titan and drifted over the sea of clouds. He corrected the altimeter for the mass of this body of three thousand miles diameter, and noted that they were up about six thousand feet. Test samples indicated that the outside air, although thin, was pure. But they did not open the ports as they had no intention of landing.
Ora had not yet awakened and Carr hoped fervently that she would not do so until they had left the immediate vicinity of Titan. It was vastly better if she missed seeing anything of the barbarians of the cloudy satellite. Besides, with her adventuresome and fearless nature, she'd not be satisfied merely to look on from afar--she'd want them to land. And that must not be done.
Something tinkled metallically against the hull plates of the vessel. Again and again the sound was repeated, and soon they saw that the air was filled with driving particles which clattered on the thick glass of the ports and contacted resoundingly with the hull. A vast cloud of black loomed directly ahead, springing up from the tossing cloud banks; and Mado yanked at the controls, swerving the Nomad sharply from her course.
But there was no escaping the fury of that sudden squall; they were in the thick of it in an instant, and the ship was buffeted and tossed about as if it were a toy. Millions of the driving particles battered the Nomad and the din of their pounding was terrific as the ship was whirled deeper into the midst of the tempest.
* * * * *
Carr saw that the black particles were piling up around the rim of the port, sticking fast to the metal of the hull. They were bristling in fantastic array, like iron filings adhering to the poles of a magnet. In a flash it came to him that these particles were magnetic; the Nomad was covered with them and they piled on ever more thickly, soon weighting her down so heavily that she lost altitude. They were at the mercy of a furious electrical storm of mysterious nature.
"Imps of the canals!" Mado shouted above the din. "We're finished! The machinery is paralyzed. This iron hail is charged."
The viewing port was completely covered over now with particles that arched across from rim to rim, slender rod-like things about two inches long and of the thickness of heavy wire. Black, they were, as black as graphite. Detis worked frantically with Mado at the useless controls, vainly endeavoring to stabilize the pitching vessel.
Dazed by the suddenness of the calamity, Carr turned to look at the altimeter. Five thousand feet, forty-five hundred, four thousand! Nose down, and reeling drunkenly, the Nomad was diving to certain disaster on the rocky ground of Titan. He dashed from the control room, calling distractedly to Ora as he raced along the passageway.
She staggered from the stateroom and into his arms, a slim, boyish figure in her snug leather jacket and breeches. Together they were flung violently against the partition by a heavy lurch of the vessel.
"What is it?" she gasped, clinging to him for support.
"A freak storm, in Titan's atmosphere. Guess the Nomad's done for." Carr drew her fiercely close as an awful picture flashed across his mind--of Ora's body mangled in twisted wreckage; of the savages finding it, down there....
The metal floor-plates seemed to buckle and hurl themselves aft with a grinding crash of disrupted joints. Holding desperately to the precious little body within his arms, Carr was thrown off his feet. There was a detonation as if the universe had been blasted into oblivion--then darkness, and numbed silence.
* * * * *
"Carr, you're hurt!" Ora moaned.
He was--a little. His head was splitting and the taste of blood was in his mouth, but it was nothing serious. He'd been half knocked out, but his head was clearing already. Of far greater importance was the fact that Ora was unharmed; he satisfied himself of that immediately.
"I'm all right," he grunted, struggling to his feet and feeling around in the blackness.
The lights in the passage were out and he groped blindly along the partition, the metal of which had suddenly become very hot to the touch. There was a curious feeling of lightness as if his body had no weight at all; the ship rolled gently and he knew they were falling swiftly to the inevitable crash. Yet he clung fast to Ora, and, together, they made their way to the control room.
Faint daylight streamed in through the ports there and he saw Mado and Detis, both bleeding from injuries they had received when the mysterious shock hurled them amongst the control mechanisms. They were working furiously with the exciter-generator, which had stopped. The Nomad was without power and helpless to exert her anti-gravity energy.
"The iron hail!" gasped the Europan scientist. "It gave up its charge, Carr--exploded. Here, give us a hand and see if we can get the generators started."
The ports were clear of the black particles and Carr saw that the outer surface of the glass was cracked and darkened from the heat of the blast. He understood, remembering the black band and the flash they had seen across the cloud layer from afar. And in the instant of remembering he saw that the ground was very near, rushing upward to meet them. A coil of the exciter-armature broke away in his fingers; the thing had been burned out by the electric storm, and the Nomad was doomed.
The altimeter needle moved with sickening speed and already registered but little more than five hundred feet. Four hundred! Carr braced himself for the impending crash and gathered Ora in his arms.
And then a strange thing happened. Four light rays, dazzling in intensity, stabbed up at them from the forest beneath them and converged on the vessel's hull. The Nomad staggered, then came to an even keel and slackened in her mad dash to the surface. She vibrated from stem to stern under the mighty conflict of energies and they felt themselves pressed hard against the floor-plate. But the mysterious energy beams had come too late to save them. A densely wooded slope loomed directly ahead. There was a crashing of branches and the rending of mighty trunks, and the Nomad came to a jarring stop.
* * * * *
"Devils of Terra!" Mado ejaculated. "We're in a fine fix now. We'll have to set foot on Titan whether we want to or not."
Carr had laughed, somewhat shakily, in relief. They were safe, all of them, and no one much hurt. And the generator coils could be rewound. But he sobered instantly at Mado's words; they'd have to produce copper and insulating materials for the job.
"Right," he agreed. "And that's not so good."
"What's so terrible about landing here?" Ora inquired. "I thought we were expecting to explore this satellite." She looked up from her ministrations to Detis, who had a nasty scalp wound.
"The people here are dangerous savages," Carr answered gravely. "At least some of them are; we saw them in the rulden. You'll have to remain aboard while we look up the ones who projected those rays and do some bargaining with them."
"What! You expect me to hide in the vessel while you're at work outside? Not much! I want to see something of Titan while we are here." Her pretty chin was set in that determined manner she had.
"I tell you it's too risky!" Carr was firm, but he looked at Mado beseechingly, signaling for his support.
But the Martian only grinned owlishly. He knew as well as did Carr that Ora would have her way.
"Risky--pooh!" she returned. "I'm not afraid. We have our ray pistols and the funny torpedoes you brought from Mars. Besides, I don't believe it's as bad as you think."
Carr shrugged his shoulders. After all, they probably would not encounter any of the savages here in the forest. Beings of far greater intelligence were responsible for those rays, that much was certain. Besides, they'd be three able-bodied men out there to watch over her, and he'd make sure she didn't get too far away from the ship.
* * * * *
Carr was first to step from the opened manhole to the soft carpet of the Titanese forest. He found the air cool and crisp, with a tang of ozone assailing his nostrils. There was a pulsating motion in it that he could hardly define; it seemed that it massaged his cheeks and raised the short hairs at the nape of his neck and on his forearms as if they were electrified. Those vibrations Detis had told them about were actively at work.
The gravity was even less than on Mars, though slightly greater than that of Europa. Mado was entirely at ease, and the Europans would not be bothered by the slight change in their weight. But Carr would have to take it easy, as he'd done ever since leaving Earth. His muscles were too powerful for his body on these smaller worlds, though this was a mighty advantage if he took care not to over-exert.
A melodious whistling note rose high somewhere in the depths of the forest and trailed off into eery silence. The sky was overcast with gray clouds and the light was poor, of little more than twilight intensity on Terra, this being partly due to the masking of the sun by the clouds and partly to their tremendous distance from that radiant body. Odd that it was not colder, he thought. Probably those vibratory radiations of Saturn's rings had something to do with the temperature in addition to their other effects.
Detis was on his knees, examining a queer specimen of purplish moss which had drawn his eye. The eternal scientist in the man could not be downed. Mado had come out armed with one of the bulky kalbite torpedo-projectors and was looking around belligerently.
Ora drew herself erect and took a deep breath as soon as her feet touched the ground, her eyes bright and her cheeks flushed with excitement. "Oh, Carr," she breathed, "it's marvelous; an honest-to-goodness virgin forest. We've neither of us ever seen one, you know. Aren't you thrilled?"
"We-e-ll," he admitted, "I've always looked forward to wandering in just such places. But, with you along, and thinking of those barbarians we saw--"
"Silly. I'm as capable as any of you. And, even if I couldn't look out for myself, I know that you will be at my side." She pursed her lips and tossed back her head provocatively.
What was a man to do?
* * * * *
A deep-toned booming note came then from the hills, commencing like the warning siren of a space liner approaching its berth and swelling to a bombilation of ear-shattering sound that set the steel of the Nomad's hull vibrating and their very flesh and bones a-tingle. Then it died away as had the bird note which was the first sound of this world to greet them.
"Jupiter! What's that?" Mado unslung his torpedo-projector.
As if in answer to his startled question, a weird object drifted over the treetops and poised directly above them, about fifty feet up. An egg-shaped thing, six or seven feet in length, and seemingly made of white metal. It swayed there gently, without visible means of support, and they could make out a transparent disk on its side, back of which there was a human head with eyes that regarded them curiously.
Mado raised his torpedo tube and took aim.
"Hold it!" Carr warned him. "This fellow's no savage. Probably he's one of those who tried to break our fall. Friendly, perhaps."
Two more of the ovoids drifted in from the woods and joined the first one, all three settling a few feet lower and their occupants staring intently at the intruders.
"I'll get the psycho-ray apparatus," Detis said excitedly. "We may be able to get thought contact with them." He dived through the Nomad's entrance-manhole as he spoke.
"Nothing so frightening about these creatures," Ora murmured, her eyes reproaching Carr. "Why, they seem anxious to know that we are not enemies."
And, indeed, this seemed to be the case, for the strange ovoids wafted still lower, dropping until a faint humming of the internal gravity mechanism came to their ears. These were a highly developed people of scientific attainment; civilized beings. But Mado kept firm hold of his torpedo tube, and Carr fingered the ray pistol at his belt.
The booming note from the hills came then, frightfully near this time, and the three ovoids moved with sudden roaring of their motors, literally hurling themselves skyward. But the menace they sought to escape was real, and not to be outdone in speed. A vast black something whirred out from beyond the treetops and flung itself upon them.
"A pterodactyl!" Mado gasped. "One of the prehistoric monsters of Terra!"
"Carr, there are men riding it!" Ora exclaimed. "Red men!"
* * * * *
It was true; the pteranodon, a horrid bat-like thing with a wing-spread of fully twenty feet, carried three of the bronzed savages clinging to a sort of harness that encircled its body just back of the crested head. The huge flying reptile whistled raucously as it flew and one of the savages was whirling a sling which held a stone as large as his own head. They watched in amazement as the swift aerial steed flapped its way after the rising ovoids. And then the savage let loose an end of his thong and released its missile, which crashed full against the transparent disk of an ovoid and tore its way through.
The damaged ovoid careened violently and then fell end over end, crashing in the forest. With a bellow of fury, Mado fired with the kalbite tube at his hip. There was the twang of the propelling ray, and the slender arrow-like torpedo sped forth on its message of death, singing spitefully as it cleaved the air of Titan.
It was a fair hit, catching the pteranodon just ahead of its trailing legs and exploding with the characteristic screaming roar of the deadly kalbite. The monstrous reptile and its crew of barbarians vanished in a blaze that lighted the clouds above them and brought a babble of excited shoutings from the depths of the forest on all sides. They were surrounded by the uncivilized ones of Titan! And those of the ovoids had run off at the first sign of danger.
The din from the forest was augmented by the whistlings of a second pteranodon which darted after the remaining ovoids, following swiftly as these retreated with ludicrous, wabbling haste.
* * * * *
Ora screamed and struck out at something with her fist. A naked arm had reached out from the underbrush and grasped her wrist. Carr wheeled and his ray pistol spat crackling flame. The savage, an undersized red man with an enormous head, rose unsteadily from his hiding place, a look of terrible hate in his contorted features. Then, like a punctured balloon, his body collapsed into the nothingness of complete disintegration.
"Back, back to the Nomad!" Carr roared, dragging Ora with him and leveling his pistol at a group of the bronze brutes who rushed into the space where the vessel lay amongst the trees.
Mado was busy with his torpedo tube and a vast explosion shook the ground beneath them as a trio of the savages were blasted out of existence. A great tree toppled and crashed across the nose of the Nomad, its roots ripped from the soil by the concussion.
Ora had whipped out her own pistol and was firing as they fell back. Game kid, she was! Carr gloated as he saw she was making each shot tell. But this couldn't last; there were hundreds of them now, long-armed and big-headed red devils swarming in from every direction. Carr dodged none too quickly to save his skull from a swift-flung stone, which clanged against the Nomad's hull. There was a perfect hail of the missiles now: one struck his left arm a numbing blow, and he heard a sickening thud and Ora's moan as she was hit. And there were winged darts, from blow-guns.
A dusky moon-face leered into his own, horribly close, and he yelled his rage as he drove it back with a swift uppercut. But the horde of savages came on in ever increasing numbers and with renewed vigor.
"Quick--inside!" Carr hissed in Ora's ear as his fingers found the rim of the manhole. He'd have her safely within in a moment.
Detis clambered out with the thought machine in his arms, and a singing dart from one of the blow-guns pierced him through and through. A look of astonishment spread over his kindly features, and he fell forward, dying.
And then Carr looked up into a grinning face behind a huge club that was swinging downward. He threw up his arm to break the force of the blow, but the club fell too swiftly; the enormous weight of it crashed down on his skull, and he knew no more.
* * * * *
When he awakened it was to stare for a dazed moment into a pair of blue eyes that looked down upon him in a place of dim light and stuffy atmosphere. The eyes were only vaguely familiar in his befuddled memory. Beautiful eyes, though, and incredibly dear....
"Ora!" he exclaimed, in wondering remembrance, trying to sit up as he grasped her hand.
"Hush!" she warned him, placing a finger-tip to his lips. "Be quiet now and perhaps they'll leave us alone for a while."
"They! Did they capture us?" he whispered. "Are you hurt?"
"We're prisoners, all right, excepting poor father. But they didn't harm me much, outside of the rough handling."
"The devils. What of Detis?" He was growing stronger by the minute and now saw that they were in an open-mouthed cave and that Mado was sitting hunched dejectedly in a corner, his massive shoulders drooping and his proud head bowed on his chest.
"Father--they killed him," Ora sighed almost inaudibly. "Have you forgotten? We saw the dart strike him and I--I saw it sticking from his chest. Oh, Carr!" A dry sob caught in her throat.
"Yes--yes. Lord!" Carr groaned, sick at heart with the sudden recollection and full of compassion for the stricken girl.
He patted her hand with clumsy tenderness as she turned her head and gazed out through the cave mouth in silence that was fraught with intense pain. She would take it like that: with little to say but with much inward suffering.
And then he noticed a fourth occupant of the cavern, a young lad of Titan. Like one of the savages in his small stature and in the large size of his head, he was much lighter in color and his body was encased in a snug one-piece garment of shimmering material of silky texture. And there was a different light in his eyes, the light of intelligence and culture.
"Who is that?" Carr whispered.
Ora stared when she saw that the stranger was on his feet. "Oh," she exclaimed, "I'm glad he has recovered. He's one of the civilized ones; they captured him with his ovoid when the second pteranodon went out after them."
* * * * *
Mado was standing now, endeavoring to communicate with the lad by means of signs and the drawing of crude pictures in the red sand of the cavern floor. The graceful little fellow watched him with understanding and with a smile of amused tolerance. Then he halted the big Martian with an imperious motion, addressing him in velvety voice.
"Nazu," he said simply, placing a forefinger on his breast and bowing before the astonished Mado.
"Imps of the canals!" the Martian exclaimed, grinning delightedly as he cast a swift look at Carr and Ora. "He's telling me his name." "Mine's Mado," he said, turning his eyes to the keen gray ones that smiled up at him. "Mado," he repeated, placing a huge fist against his own chest and bending his body in awkward imitation of the lad's courtly gesture.
They made no attempt to converse in tongues that would convey no meaning, but there was no mistaking the quick friendship that sprang up between the incongruous pair. Mado was the boy's slave from that moment, and Nazu looked up to the Martian with all of youth's admiration for his vast bulk and rippling muscles.
Suddenly they were without light and Carr saw that a curtain of woven rushes had been dropped over the mouth of the cave. There were soft padding footsteps on every side and he drew back against the rock wall with Ora clasped in his arms. A sinewy hand grasped his wrist and twisted his right arm free. He lashed out in the darkness and was rewarded by a grunt of pain as his fist contacted with an unseen face. Nazu's voice rose in anguish, and Mado's wrathful bellow was followed by a frightful commotion as he tore into his assailants.
They were everywhere in the blackness, these slippery little savages of Titan, their half naked bodies crowding him and stifling him with their sweaty nearness. Again and again Carr struck out, but it was like fighting a horde of squirming and clawing feline creatures that swarmed over him and bore him down by sheer weight of numbers. They dragged Ora from his arms and quickly overpowered him. Thongs of rawhide twisted deeply into the flesh of his wrists and he was hauled forth into the daylight.
* * * * *
Securely tied, hand and foot, Carr was propped sitting with his back to a huge boulder. He saw they had been carried to the place they had viewed in the disk of the rulden. A dozen paces away, Ora and Mado sat similarly bound. The Martian had been gagged as well and Carr was forced to smile despite the seriousness of the situation. His mad bellowings must have proved as painful to the ears of the red dwarfs as had his fists to their bodies.
Nazu, unbound and walking proudly erect, was being marched to the edge of a smoking fissure by two of the savages. No others of the red men were in sight.
Carr shuddered. It was the place of sacrifice they had seen in the rulden, and the natives were in hiding as before. Nazu would be first to go; then Ora, most likely. He strained desperately at his bonds when he realized the awful significance of their position. It was incredible that Ora was here and in the hands of these unspeakable monsters. Why, she'd be thrown into the incandescent folds of the flapping fire-god, along with the rest of them! He groaned in an agony of self-recrimination; he should not have allowed her to come on this mad voyage.
Then came that roaring column of flame from out the crater, and the weird fluttering thing whose intense heat radiated across the intervening space like the breath of a blast furnace. The rumble of drums commenced, and thousands of the red men dashed over the rocky area to worship at the shrine of their pitiless god.
As their monotonous chant rose high, Nazu was rushed to the edge of the pit. The ghastly, shimmering heat-ghost drifted hungrily to await the flinging of the slight form into its consuming embrace. Carr was glad to see that Ora had turned her head.
* * * * *
And then there came a sucking noise from the depths of the crater, and the pillar of blue flame vanished abruptly, the incandescent ghost-shape flapping disconsolately in its wake. The chant of the savages trailed off into a chorus of disgruntled murmurings and the booming of the drums died down in disappointment. The worshippers had been cheated of their sadistic pleasure. There was something wrong with the timing of the rite; their mysterious fire-god had granted the captives a reprieve.
But the prisoners were not deceived by the solicitous treatment accorded them by their captors when they were returned to the cave and their bonds were severed. For well they knew that at the next appearance of the phenomenon of the pit they would be dragged off to the sacrifice. Sooner or later all of them were to meet the fate of those given into the embrace of the heat-demon.
A guard of fifty or more of the savages, armed with blow-guns and stone hatchets, paraded continuously before the mouth of the cave as one of their number returned with a huge woven container of fruits and nuts of strange form and color. This was set before them and the bearer withdrew.
"Humph!" Mado grunted. "Seems like they want to fatten us up for this heated sheet of theirs. Like hogs fattened for the market."
But he reached for the striped yellow melon atop the heap, and, at a bright nod of approval from Nazu, bit into its smooth skin.
Carr's stomach rebelled when he looked at the food. He could not bear the sight of the stuff, sitting there in the damp cavern with Ora's blue eyes regarding him in the dim light. Those wide eyes held a gleam of hope and trust that would not be discouraged.
* * * * *
He gazed out through the cave mouth and calculated their chances. There were none. Not against that horde of barbarians; there were too many of the devils to fight with their bare hands. If only they had their ray pistols, or a torpedo projector. At least they could sell their lives dearly. His eyes narrowed speculatively when they came to rest on a peculiar egg-shaped object that stood out there in the open. It was Nazu's ovoid. Here was an idea!
But he saw that its entrance door was open and that the space inside was too small for any of them excepting one of the small stature of the Titanese. It was crammed with machinery. Nazu was the only one of their number who could squeeze into the thing; in fact he alone knew how to operate the queer flying machine. There must be others of his kind, plenty of them; another country, or a city full of them at least. Perhaps he might obtain aid if only he could be made to understand, and if they could get him out there safely somehow.
"Mado," he called, pointing, "do you suppose we could dope out a way of getting Nazu aboard his sky vehicle to go for help?"
The Martian stared, his mouth stuffed with food and his jaws in full action. He strained suddenly to swallow the huge mouthful so he could make reply.
"Not a chance," he grunted. "Why, there's a million of them out there. You won't catch them napping."
But he turned his attention from the basket of fruit and made a desperate effort to convey the idea to Nazu, whose bright eyes took in his every significant motion and whose sensitive fingers traced images in the sand that conveyed his own thoughts to the mind of the Martian in rapid succession.
"He's got it!" Mado gloated. "The game little cuss would go in a minute if we could get him to the ovoid. He's got a picture of a big island here, so help me! An island covered with circular dwellings, made of metal like the ovoids, he indicates. Look here."
* * * * *
Carr and Ora moved over to watch the swift sketching of the Titanese lad. By means of pantomime and his carefully drawn pictures, he told them of his people, making it clear that they were forced to live in insulated dwellings and travel only in the ovoids, which likewise were insulated against the devastating vibrations that emanated from Saturn's rings. He sketched those rings, illustrating the vibrations and tapping his own forehead in explanation of the effect on the brain; pointing to the savages to indicate the ultimate fate of his kind. The protective insulation, it appeared, was not permanent; sooner or later, all of them would become barbarians like the others.
The savages out there were their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers, gone mad; their skins darkened by continued action of the vibrations after they fled their insulated homes. His pictures of the family life were meticulously drawn. His people never warred upon these savage kin of theirs--naturally--though the reverse was not always true. However, Nazu pointed to the ovoid and showed his willingness to help the strangers. But he shook his head sadly as he counted the barbarians on his fingers, multiplying the number endlessly by clapping his hands. There were too many of them; the thing was impossible.
"Good Lord!" Carr exclaimed. "He's a marvel at communicating his thoughts without words. But I'd think his people would beat it for the hills without waiting. Might as well have it over with."
"But, they're still working on the problem," Ora objected. "With their wisdom, they'll finally get the thing under control. And they probably hope to discover a way of restoring their maddened relatives."
She was doing something with the red sand; wetting her fingers in a trickle of water that oozed from the wall and making a red paste which she smeared on her white forearm and then rubbed off.
"I guess you're right," Carr admitted. Then, watching her strange performance, he asked, "What are you doing?"
She looked up with sparkling eyes and stretched forth her arm. "It stains, Carr, see!" she exclaimed excitedly. "We can fix up Nazu to resemble one of the savages. It is the exact color of their skin."
"Mado!" he called, sensing at once the possibilities of her discovery. They could make up Nazu to perfection. Mingling with the barbarians unsuspected, he might get possession of the ovoid.
* * * * *
The Titanese lad fell in with the idea at once and the two men started work on him with water and the powdery stuff they had taken for red sand. They stripped him of his silken garment and smeared him from head to foot, Carr taking especial care to see that his upper body and face were thoroughly covered. Then, after using his own clothing to swab off the coating, they stepped back to view the result. He was exactly like one of the red men in color now, and he stood there twisting his face in a wicked grin to heighten the similarity.
"The little devil!" Mado chuckled. "He gets the idea perfectly. We'll have to muss his hair now and fix him up with a kirtle like theirs."
Removing his suede jacket and turning it inside out, he draped it about the slim hips of Nazu, then slapped his chest approvingly. "There you are, lad," he told the grinning youngster. "A tough-looking kid we've made of you, too."
The words were lost on the young Titanese, but his bright eyes showed that he fully comprehended the humor as well as the gravity of the situation. The improvised covering would pass without question as one of the untanned hides the barbarians wore dangling from their waists. The disguise was faultless.
Ora had been watching at the mouth of the cave. Now she called out in low-voiced warning, "Hurry! One of them is coming."
Carr moved forward swiftly to face the opening, while Mado stood with his great bulk hiding the now unrecognizable Nazu. The savage entered, proceeding directly to where Carr was standing. He bent over the fruit basket and then the Earth-man was upon him.
The wiry red man struggled furiously, but Carr had a grip on his windpipe that stopped his attempts to cry out and quickly reduced him to a state of flabby subjection. Then he bound and gagged his captive, tearing strips of linen from his own shirt to provide the necessary material. In a moment they had bundled the trussed-up dwarf into a dark corner of the cavern, and Nazu stepped forth blithely to lift the basket to his shoulder.
* * * * *
Everything seemed to happen at once after that. Nazu stalked boldly out among the savages, who paid him no attention whatsoever. He passed out of their field of vision for a moment, and then they saw him at the circular door of the ovoid. In a flash he was inside and the thing soared speedily into the air and out of sight. The red men broke forth in a babel of excited jabbering and then they were crowding into the cave, hundreds of them it seemed, shrieking their rage as they attacked the hapless prisoners.
Carr went down fighting madly but to no avail. He hadn't counted on this; he should have known better. A crushing weight of them was upon him, clawing and beating at him as he struggled to rise. They were suffocating him with their rank animal odors.
And then he was dragged into the open air. Battered and dazed, he saw they had found their fellow, the one he had bound and gagged. Ora was considerably mussed up, but unharmed, he observed with relief; but Mado lay there inert. This was the first time Carr had ever seen him take the count at the hands of man.
When they had untied the one whose place had been taken by Nazu, he came straight for the Earth-man and would have brained him with a huge stone had not his fellows interfered. He objected strenuously, his eyes red with hate and a torrent of harsh gutturals pouring from his lips. But the others held him off; this strange white giant from the machine of the skies was to be saved for the embrace of the fire-god.
* * * * *
With the entire blame for Nazu's escape thus placed upon the Terrestrial, Ora and Mado were returned to the cavern and left unmolested. But Carr was prodded into moving over against a boulder and was surrounded by a semi-circle of the dwarfs who squatted calmly to watch him, blow-guns in their hands and stone hatchets on the ground within easy reach. They were taking no more chances with this one.
The long day of Titan dragged interminably but the watchful eyes of his guards never strayed from their prisoner. At any moment the fire-god might make an appearance and the rite of sacrifice take place. Carr supposed that the thing made more or less regular appearances, like a geyser of Earth. And, next time, there would be no escape.
Night fell, and still those eyes watched intently in the light reflected against the low-flung clouds from the seething crater nearby. Nothing had been seen of Nazu or any of the ovoids. Probably it was useless to expect them; they could not bring themselves to do battle against these savage kin of theirs. Anyway, he was glad the little fellow had gotten away; he hoped he was safely in bed--if they had beds in those insulated dwellings.
He could not sleep. All through the night he sat with bowed head, alternately planning rescue attempts and cursing himself for bringing Ora to this horrible end. Detis was dead; the Nomad was hopelessly beyond repair for many days, even if they could make their escape and locate it; Nazu had saved his own skin, and they were left to the mercy of these vibration-crazed brutes who waited there in the flickering red twilight all around him. It was a revolting ending for an adventure that had started so auspiciously.
* * * * *
With the first faint light of dawn came the roaring of the pillar of flame from out the crater. Instantly there rose the hollow booming of the drums and the chanting of thousands of the barbarous worshippers. The place was swarming with them almost instantly, and Carr's guards closed in on him with evil glee.
Ora was brought out into the open, her arms held fast by two of the red devils who yanked her roughly along between them. Carr roared out in blind rage and in awful fear for the girl. He struck out viciously into the first grinning face that pressed near. Something in his brain seemed to snap then, and he became a snarling, fighting animal, battling against overwhelming odds in defence of his mate. A dart buried itself in his arm and a stone hatchet bit into his shoulder, but he scarcely felt the hurts. All that mattered now was Ora; they were taking her away--taking her to the folds of that incredible hot thing that flapped there at the crater's rim. An arm snapped like a pipestem in his fingers and he heard the squeal of pain from somewhere in the tangled mass of savages around him.
And then they were falling back; easing up on him. The din was increasing, but it seemed that a note of fear had crept in to replace the exultant frenzy of those chanting voices. The drums were stilled.
Wiping the blood from his eyes with the back of his hand, he saw the barbarians running everywhere; they were screaming in superstitious terror and fighting one another in their desperate anxiety to escape the vicinity of their precious fire-god. A tremendous voice boomed out over the hubbub, a voice that came from the crater in vast commanding gutturals that struck terror into the souls of the panicky barbarians. Yet somehow that mightily sonorous voice carried a familiar ring.
Carr raised astonished eyes to the pillar of blue flame and was seized with a well-nigh uncontrollable impulse to flee with the red men. For a monstrous image of Detis swayed there in the hot vapors, a massive arm raised menacingly and an equally Brobdingnagian voice issuing from his lips in fierce syllables of the red man's tongue!
"Detis!" Carr shouted. "Detis! Ora--Mado!"
* * * * *
And then he was running toward the crater's edge in bounding strides that carried him twenty feet at a leap. He understood now. Detis had recovered from his wound and was reversing the rulden's energy. He was projecting his own image and voice, many times amplified, into the column of fire to terrify the savages!
Ora was lying there, on the rim of the pit. She had fainted at sight of the ghost-shape, whose white-hot folds flapped there, reaching to engulf her in their all-consuming embrace. Carr babbled like a madman as he pulled her away from the horrible thing that pulsated with eager flutterings not three feet away, its hot breath singeing her silken lashes and brows.
Mado was there, encouraging him and yelling something else he couldn't understand; pointing skyward. And then he saw it; the Nomad, with its sleek, tapered cylinder of a body nosing down toward them with the silvery aura of its propulsive energy gleaming like a beacon of hope against the dull clouds of the satellite of terror. And there was something else: one of the ovoids of Titan, clinging there to the vessel's hull plates, alongside the open manhole. Nazu had not failed them after all. His mind refused to question the miracle further.
Somehow, when the vessel landed, he managed to reach the manhole with his precious burden. He staggered through the passageway and into their stateroom, tenderly stretching Ora on her own bed. In the next instant he was rummaging in the medicine closet. He found ointment for her burns; smelling salts; damp cloths. With trembling fingers he ministered to her, a great joy welling up within him as he saw she was recovering. Another minute, back there at the crater, and he'd have lost her forever. He swallowed hard at the thought, his eyes misty as he looked down at her and remembered.
Impatiently he jerked the barbed dart from his arm and poured a powerful antiseptic into the open wound, unmindful of the pain. As best he could, he disinfected his other cuts and bandaged them. Ora had raised herself and now sat there, swaying weakly and regarding him with anxious gaze.
* * * * *
A little later they made their way forward to the control room. The Nomad had taken off and was drifting slowly higher. At the controls sat a strange, bedaubed figure. Nazu!
Mado was peering through the coils of a helix of silver ribbon that had been erected beside the rulden.
"Father!" Ora darted past him and dropped to her knees on the floor-plates at the Martian's side. The body of Detis was slumped there a ghastly corpse within those gleaming coils. But his kind features were fixed in a serene smile. He had gone to his reward with content in his heart.
Only then did Carr remember. One could not subject his body to the reversed energies of the rulden without certain expectation of death. A few short seconds with those terrible oscillations surging through his being, carrying the amplified visual and oral reproduction through the ether, and the Europan scientist had perished. Knowingly, willingly, Detis had given his life that the rest of them might live! Recovered miraculously from his first serious injury, he had done this magnificent thing deliberately and gladly....
A great lump rose in Carr's throat as Ora's sobbing came to his ears. With his vision blurred by tears, he turned to the pilot's seat, where Nazu faced him with solemn eyes.
"Nazu go now," the amazing young Titanese stated. He spoke in halting syllables of Cos, the language of the inner planets!
* * * * *
Carr stared agape, scarcely believing his ears.
"Detis great man," Nazu continued, relinquishing his seat to the dazed Earthman. "Nazu find him in ship. My people already there with him. They want to help when you come. Return after capture and heal dart wound of Detis. Bring wire and help him fix motors. Work very quick, my people. Detis have brain machine. Talk with Nazu; teach him words, also very quick. Nazu tell where you are and we come to help. Then he scare away red men--and die. That is all. Now I go--and you go also. Quickly."
"So that's how it happened," Carr muttered, slowly mulling over the amazing things he had heard. He watched the Titanese lad keenly as his eyes wandered in Mado's direction. He saw the admiring light that came into them as the big Martian removed the body of Detis from the helix and carried it gently away.
"Wait a minute," he interposed, as Nazu made as if to leave. "Mado would like to talk to you."
"Must go soon." The youngster drew himself up proudly. "Nazu is prince of his people. They need him. And you--you must go at once. Vibrations of mother planet's rings work on you too long already. Must be quick. Else you be wild men--like those down there."
He waved his arm in a gesture that embraced all Titan. Anxiety was written large on his countenance and his gaze traveled nervously to the door through which Mado must return.
The big Martian was not long in coming. He had carried the body of Detis aft, leaving Ora there with her dead. Carr's heart ached for her; he knew how silently and terribly she suffered. Knowing that her father had been healed of his deadly wound by the friendly Titanese, only to be taken from her afterwards by his own heroic act, made the blow doubly hard.
Later they would give Detis a decent burial, sending him through the airlock to drift aimlessly in space, preserved through the ages by the intense cold and the absence of air. A fitting tomb for the noblest of the vagabonds!
* * * * *
Mado chattered endlessly with Nazu, who was impatient to be off. Seeing that it was impossible to detain him, and realizing at last the stern necessity of hastening their own departure, he finally let him go. The youngster bid Carr a sober, friendly farewell and followed Mado to the airlock.
Carr heard the clang of the manhole cover as it swung home, and was bolted to its seat. The ovoid drifted away from the vessel and dropped toward the forest beneath them. Nazu had gone to rejoin his people.
His fingers strayed to the controls. They must get away from the evil influence of those vibrations; he had felt something of their degrading power in the fighting down there. He had almost become a savage himself, he remembered with a revulsion of feeling.
The feel of the levers brought to him a renewed sense of confidence and responsibility. A while back he thought he'd never perform such simple duties again. The Nomad responded instantly and rose swiftly to hover over the pit of the fire-god. The flame had partly subsided and the ghost-shape wabbled there, changing form rapidly with darkening colors. Some weird phenomenon of nature that those brutes had set up as a deity.
Carr increased the repulsion energy once more and the Nomad shot skyward like a rocket. Through the floor port he saw Nazu's tiny ovoid scudding over the treetops. Then it had vanished.
"We're getting away none too soon," said Mado, rejoining him.
"Right." Carr watched the temperature indicator as he increased speed to the maximum they could withstand in the atmosphere.
They were out above the cloud layer then and he cast apprehensive eyes on the enormous flat disks encircling the great globe that was Saturn. Something like a hundred and seventy thousand miles across them, he remembered. But the astronomers of the inner planets had little actual knowledge of their composition; they knew nothing at all of their terrible power or their strange inhabitants.
* * * * *
The Nomad left Titan with tremendous acceleration now, as he increased the speed of the rejuvenated generators. They'd go on, on toward Uranus, Neptune--anywhere, away from this ringed planet that was responsible for the death of one of their number; away from the region that was soon to become the tomb of Detis.
There was silence then as the Nomad raced on through the blackness. Mado gripped the rail of the port and peered long and earnestly at the tiny pinpoint of light that now was Titan.
"Great kid, that Nazu," the Martian said, after a while. "Too bad he couldn't come along with us."
"Yes." Carr was thinking of the different life there would be on board the Nomad; and well he knew that Mado was thinking of the same thing. The Martian had missed the close companionship of his Terrestrial friend since his marriage to Ora; missed it more than he would admit, even to himself. And the lad, Nazu, had appealed to him; he would have fathered him as only a lonely bachelor can. Suddenly Carr's own friendship for the big fellow seemed a wonderful thing.
"Never mind, old man," he whispered, reaching over and gripping Mado's hand mightily, "We'll be a three-cornered family, Ora and you and I. And, who knows but that you'll find the one and only girl yourself, some fine day?"
"Oh, shut up!" Mado grunted.
But a big hand closed down hard on Carr's fingers, and the Earthman knew that their friendship was more firmly cemented than ever before.
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY
By Stanley G. Weinbaum
Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Ares.
"Air you can breathe!" he exulted. "It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there!" He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the glass of the port.
The other three stared at him sympathetically--Putz, the engineer, Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison, the astronomer and captain of the expedition. Dick Jarvis was chemist of the famous crew, the Ares expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars. This, of course, was in the old days, less than twenty years after the mad American Doheny perfected the atomic blast at the cost of his life, and only a decade after the equally mad Cardoza rode on it to the moon. They were true pioneers, these four of the Ares. Except for a half-dozen moon expeditions and the ill-fated de Lancey flight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus, they were the first men to feel other gravity than earth's, and certainly the first successful crew to leave the earth-moon system. And they deserved that success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts--the months spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing of an absolutely unknown world.
Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of his frost-bitten nose. He sighed again contentedly.
"Well," exploded Harrison abruptly, "are we going to hear what happened? You set out all shipshape in an auxiliary rocket, we don't get a peep for ten days, and finally Putz here picks you out of a lunatic ant-heap with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill it, man!"
"Speel?" queried Leroy perplexedly. "Speel what?"
"He means 'spiel'," explained Putz soberly. "It iss to tell."
Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance without the shadow of a smile. "That's right, Karl," he said in grave agreement with Putz. "Ich spiel es!" He grunted comfortably and began.
"According to orders," he said, "I watched Karl here take off toward the North, and then I got into my flying sweat-box and headed South. You'll remember, Cap--we had orders not to land, but just scout about for points of interest. I set the two cameras clicking and buzzed along, riding pretty high--about two thousand feet--for a couple of reasons. First, it gave the cameras a greater field, and second, the under-jets travel so far in this half-vacuum they call air here that they stir up dust if you move low."
"We know all that from Putz," grunted Harrison. "I wish you'd saved the films, though. They'd have paid the cost of this junket; remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures?"
"The films are safe," retorted Jarvis. "Well," he resumed, "as I said, I buzzed along at a pretty good clip; just as we figured, the wings haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundred miles per hour, and even then I had to use the under-jets.
"So, with the speed and the altitude and the blurring caused by the under-jets, the seeing wasn't any too good. I could see enough, though, to distinguish that what I sailed over was just more of this grey plain that we'd been examining the whole week since our landing--same blobby growths and the same eternal carpet of crawling little plant-animals, or biopods, as Leroy calls them. So I sailed along, calling back my position every hour as instructed, and not knowing whether you heard me."
"I did!" snapped Harrison.
"A hundred and fifty miles south," continued Jarvis imperturbably, "the surface changed to a sort of low plateau, nothing but desert and orange-tinted sand. I figured that we were right in our guess, then, and this grey plain we dropped on was really the Mare Cimmerium which would make my orange desert the region called Xanthus. If I were right, I ought to hit another grey plain, the Mare Chronium in another couple of hundred miles, and then another orange desert, Thyle I or II. And so I did."
"Putz verified our position a week and a half ago!" grumbled the captain. "Let's get to the point."
"Coming!" remarked Jarvis. "Twenty miles into Thyle--believe it or not--I crossed a canal!"
"Putz photographed a hundred! Let's hear something new!"
"And did he also see a city?"
"Twenty of 'em, if you call those heaps of mud cities!"
"Well," observed Jarvis, "from here on I'll be telling a few things Putz didn't see!" He rubbed his tingling nose, and continued. "I knew that I had sixteen hours of daylight at this season, so eight hours--eight hundred miles--from here, I decided to turn back. I was still over Thyle, whether I or II I'm not sure, not more than twenty-five miles into it. And right there, Putz's pet motor quit!"
"Quit? How?" Putz was solicitous.
"The atomic blast got weak. I started losing altitude right away, and suddenly there I was with a thump right in the middle of Thyle! Smashed my nose on the window, too!" He rubbed the injured member ruefully.
"Did you maybe try vashing der combustion chamber mit acid sulphuric?" inquired Putz. "Sometimes der lead giffs a secondary radiation--"
"Naw!" said Jarvis disgustedly. "I wouldn't try that, of course--not more than ten times! Besides, the bump flattened the landing gear and busted off the under-jets. Suppose I got the thing working--what then? Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom and I'd have melted the floor from under me!" He rubbed his nose again. "Lucky for me a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been mashed flat!"
"I could have fixed!" ejaculated the engineer. "I bet it vas not serious."
"Probably not," agreed Jarvis sarcastically. "Only it wouldn't fly. Nothing serious, but I had my choice of waiting to be picked up or trying to walk back--eight hundred miles, and perhaps twenty days before we had to leave! Forty miles a day! Well," he concluded, "I chose to walk. Just as much chance of being picked up, and it kept me busy."
"We'd have found you," said Harrison.
"No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out."
"Water tank!" exclaimed the little biologist, Leroy. "She weigh one-quarter ton!"
"Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earth-weight, which is eighty-five here. Then, besides, my own personal two hundred and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so, tank and all, I grossed a hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday earth-weight. I figured on that when I undertook the forty-mile daily stroll. Oh--of course I took a thermo-skin sleeping bag for these wintry Martian nights.
"Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight meant twenty miles or more. It got tiresome, of course--plugging along over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's crawling biopods. But an hour or so brought me to the canal--just a dry ditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.
"There'd been water in it sometime, though. The ditch was covered with what looked like a nice green lawn. Only, as I approached, the lawn moved out of my way!"
"Eh?" said Leroy.
"Yeah, it was a relative of your biopods. I caught one--a little grass-like blade about as long as my finger, with two thin, stemmy legs."
"He is where?" Leroy was eager.
"He is let go! I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking grass opening in front and closing behind. And then I was out on the orange desert of Thyle again.
"I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome, and, incidentally, cussing that cranky motor of yours, Karl. It was just before twilight that I reached the edge of Thyle, and looked down over the gray Mare Chronium. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of that to be walked over, and then a couple of hundred miles of that Xanthus desert, and about as much more Mare Cimmerium. Was I pleased? I started cussing you fellows for not picking me up!"
"We were trying, you sap!" said Harrison.
"That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff that bounded Thyle. I found an easy place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of place as this--crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world--nothing dangerous, that is."
"Did you?" queried Harrison.
"Did I! You'll hear about it when I come to it. Well, I was just about to turn in when suddenly I heard the wildest sort of shenanigans!"
"Vot iss shenanigans?" inquired Putz.
"He says, 'Je ne sais quoi,'" explained Leroy. "It is to say, 'I don't know what.'"
"That's right," agreed Jarvis. "I didn't know what, so I sneaked over to find out. There was a racket like a flock of crows eating a bunch of canaries--whistles, cackles, caws, trills, and what have you. I rounded a clump of stumps, and there was Tweel!"
"Tweel?" said Harrison, and "Tveel?" said Leroy and Putz.
"That freak ostrich," explained the narrator. "At least, Tweel is as near as I can pronounce it without sputtering. He called it something like 'Trrrweerrlll.'"
"What was he doing?" asked the Captain.
"He was being eaten! And squealing, of course, as any one would."
"Eaten! By what?"
"I found out later. All I could see then was a bunch of black ropy arms tangled around what looked like, as Putz described it to you, an ostrich. I wasn't going to interfere, naturally; if both creatures were dangerous, I'd have one less to worry about.
"But the bird-like thing was putting up a good battle, dealing vicious blows with an eighteen-inch beak, between screeches. And besides, I caught a glimpse or two of what was on the end of those arms!" Jarvis shuddered. "But the clincher was when I noticed a little black bag or case hung about the neck of the bird-thing! It was intelligent! That or tame, I assumed. Anyway, it clinched my decision. I pulled out my automatic and fired into what I could see of its antagonist.
"There was a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and then the thing, with a disgusting sucking noise, pulled itself and its arms into a hole in the ground. The other let out a series of clacks, staggered around on legs about as thick as golf sticks, and turned suddenly to face me. I held my weapon ready, and the two of us stared at each other.
"The Martian wasn't a bird, really. It wasn't even bird-like, except just at first glance. It had a beak all right, and a few feathery appendages, but the beak wasn't really a beak. It was somewhat flexible; I could see the tip bend slowly from side to side; it was almost like a cross between a beak and a trunk. It had four-toed feet, and four fingered things--hands, you'd have to call them, and a little roundish body, and a long neck ending in a tiny head--and that beak. It stood an inch or so taller than I, and--well, Putz saw it!"
The engineer nodded. "Ja! I saw!"
Jarvis continued. "So--we stared at each other. Finally the creature went into a series of clackings and twitterings and held out its hands toward me, empty. I took that as a gesture of friendship."
"Perhaps," suggested Harrison, "it looked at that nose of yours and thought you were its brother!"
"Huh! You can be funny without talking! Anyway, I put up my gun and said 'Aw, don't mention it,' or something of the sort, and the thing came over and we were pals.
"By that time, the sun was pretty low and I knew that I'd better build a fire or get into my thermo-skin. I decided on the fire. I picked a spot at the base of the Thyle cliff, where the rock could reflect a little heat on my back. I started breaking off chunks of this desiccated Martian vegetation, and my companion caught the idea and brought in an armful. I reached for a match, but the Martian fished into his pouch and brought out something that looked like a glowing coal; one touch of it, and the fire was blazing--and you all know what a job we have starting a fire in this atmosphere!
"And that bag of his!" continued the narrator. "That was a manufactured article, my friends; press an end and she popped open--press the middle and she sealed so perfectly you couldn't see the line. Better than zippers.
"Well, we stared at the fire a while and I decided to attempt some sort of communication with the Martian. I pointed at myself and said 'Dick'; he caught the drift immediately, stretched a bony claw at me and repeated 'Tick.' Then I pointed at him, and he gave that whistle I called Tweel; I can't imitate his accent. Things were going smoothly; to emphasize the names, I repeated 'Dick,' and then, pointing at him, 'Tweel.'
"There we stuck! He gave some clacks that sounded negative, and said something like 'P-p-p-proot.' And that was just the beginning; I was always 'Tick,' but as for him--part of the time he was 'Tweel,' and part of the time he was 'P-p-p-proot,' and part of the time he was sixteen other noises!
"We just couldn't connect. I tried 'rock,' and I tried 'star,' and 'tree,' and 'fire,' and Lord knows what else, and try as I would, I couldn't get a single word! Nothing was the same for two successive minutes, and if that's a language, I'm an alchemist! Finally I gave it up and called him Tweel, and that seemed to do.
"But Tweel hung on to some of my words. He remembered a couple of them, which I suppose is a great achievement if you're used to a language you have to make up as you go along. But I couldn't get the hang of his talk; either I missed some subtle point or we just didn't think alike--and I rather believe the latter view.
"I've other reasons for believing that. After a while I gave up the language business, and tried mathematics. I scratched two plus two equals four on the ground, and demonstrated it with pebbles. Again Tweel caught the idea, and informed me that three plus three equals six. Once more we seemed to be getting somewhere.
"So, knowing that Tweel had at least a grammar school education, I drew a circle for the sun, pointing first at it, and then at the last glow of the sun. Then I sketched in Mercury, and Venus, and Mother Earth, and Mars, and finally, pointing to Mars, I swept my hand around in a sort of inclusive gesture to indicate that Mars was our current environment. I was working up to putting over the idea that my home was on the earth.
"Tweel understood my diagram all right. He poked his beak at it, and with a great deal of trilling and clucking, he added Deimos and Phobos to Mars, and then sketched in the earth's moon!
"Do you see what that proves? It proves that Tweel's race uses telescopes--that they're civilized!"
"Does not!" snapped Harrison. "The moon is visible from here as a fifth magnitude star. They could see its revolution with the naked eye."
"The moon, yes!" said Jarvis. "You've missed my point. Mercury isn't visible! And Tweel knew of Mercury because he placed the Moon at the third planet, not the second. If he didn't know Mercury, he'd put the earth second, and Mars third, instead of fourth! See?"
"Humph!" said Harrison.
"Anyway," proceeded Jarvis, "I went on with my lesson. Things were going smoothly, and it looked as if I could put the idea over. I pointed at the earth on my diagram, and then at myself, and then, to clinch it, I pointed to myself and then to the earth itself shining bright green almost at the zenith.
"Tweel set up such an excited clacking that I was certain he understood. He jumped up and down, and suddenly he pointed at himself and then at the sky, and then at himself and at the sky again. He pointed at his middle and then at Arcturus, at his head and then at Spica, at his feet and then at half a dozen stars, while I just gaped at him. Then, all of a sudden, he gave a tremendous leap. Man, what a hop! He shot straight up into the starlight, seventy-five feet if an inch! I saw him silhouetted against the sky, saw him turn and come down at me head first, and land smack on his beak like a javelin! There he stuck square in the center of my sun-circle in the sand--a bull's eye!"
"Nuts!" observed the captain. "Plain nuts!"
"That's what I thought, too! I just stared at him open-mouthed while he pulled his head out of the sand and stood up. Then I figured he'd missed my point, and I went through the whole blamed rigamarole again, and it ended the same way, with Tweel on his nose in the middle of my picture!"
"Maybe it's a religious rite," suggested Harrison.
"Maybe," said Jarvis dubiously. "Well, there we were. We could exchange ideas up to a certain point, and then--blooey! Something in us was different, unrelated; I don't doubt that Tweel thought me just as screwy as I thought him. Our minds simply looked at the world from different viewpoints, and perhaps his viewpoint is as true as ours. But--we couldn't get together, that's all. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, I liked Tweel, and I have a queer certainty that he liked me."
"Nuts!" repeated the captain. "Just daffy!"
"Yeah? Wait and see. A couple of times I've thought that perhaps we--" He paused, and then resumed his narrative. "Anyway, I finally gave it up, and got into my thermo-skin to sleep. The fire hadn't kept me any too warm, but that damned sleeping bag did. Got stuffy five minutes after I closed myself in. I opened it a little and bingo! Some eighty-below-zero air hit my nose, and that's when I got this pleasant little frostbite to add to the bump I acquired during the crash of my rocket.
"I don't know what Tweel made of my sleeping. He sat around, but when I woke up, he was gone. I'd just crawled out of my bag, though, when I heard some twittering, and there he came, sailing down from that three-story Thyle cliff to alight on his beak beside me. I pointed to myself and toward the north, and he pointed at himself and toward the south, but when I loaded up and started away, he came along.
"Man, how he traveled! A hundred and fifty feet at a jump, sailing through the air stretched out like a spear, and landing on his beak. He seemed surprised at my plodding, but after a few moments he fell in beside me, only every few minutes he'd go into one of his leaps, and stick his nose into the sand a block ahead of me. Then he'd come shooting back at me; it made me nervous at first to see that beak of his coming at me like a spear, but he always ended in the sand at my side.
"So the two of us plugged along across the Mare Chronium. Same sort of place as this--same crazy plants and same little green biopods growing in the sand, or crawling out of your way. We talked--not that we understood each other, you know, but just for company. I sang songs, and I suspect Tweel did too; at least, some of his trillings and twitterings had a subtle sort of rhythm.
"Then, for variety, Tweel would display his smattering of English words. He'd point to an outcropping and say 'rock,' and point to a pebble and say it again; or he'd touch my arm and say 'Tick,' and then repeat it. He seemed terrifically amused that the same word meant the same thing twice in succession, or that the same word could apply to two different objects. It set me wondering if perhaps his language wasn't like the primitive speech of some earth people--you know, Captain, like the Negritoes, for instance, who haven't any generic words. No word for food or water or man--words for good food and bad food, or rain water and sea water, or strong man and weak man--but no names for general classes. They're too primitive to understand that rain water and sea water are just different aspects of the same thing. But that wasn't the case with Tweel; it was just that we were somehow mysteriously different--our minds were alien to each other. And yet--we liked each other!"
"Looney, that's all," remarked Harrison. "That's why you two were so fond of each other."
"Well, I like you!" countered Jarvis wickedly. "Anyway," he resumed, "don't get the idea that there was anything screwy about Tweel. In fact, I'm not so sure but that he couldn't teach our highly praised human intelligence a trick or two. Oh, he wasn't an intellectual superman, I guess; but don't overlook the point that he managed to understand a little of my mental workings, and I never even got a glimmering of his."
"Because he didn't have any!" suggested the captain, while Putz and Leroy blinked attentively.
"You can judge of that when I'm through," said Jarvis. "Well, we plugged along across the Mare Chronium all that day, and all the next. Mare Chronium--Sea of Time! Say, I was willing to agree with Schiaparelli's name by the end of that march! Just that grey, endless plain of weird plants, and never a sign of any other life. It was so monotonous that I was even glad to see the desert of Xanthus toward the evening of the second day.
"I was fair worn out, but Tweel seemed as fresh as ever, for all I never saw him drink or eat. I think he could have crossed the Mare Chronium in a couple of hours with those block-long nose dives of his, but he stuck along with me. I offered him some water once or twice; he took the cup from me and sucked the liquid into his beak, and then carefully squirted it all back into the cup and gravely returned it.
"Just as we sighted Xanthus, or the cliffs that bounded it, one of those nasty sand clouds blew along, not as bad as the one we had here, but mean to travel against. I pulled the transparent flap of my thermo-skin bag across my face and managed pretty well, and I noticed that Tweel used some feathery appendages growing like a mustache at the base of his beak to cover his nostrils, and some similar fuzz to shield his eyes."
"He is a desert creature!" ejaculated the little biologist, Leroy.
"Huh? Why?"
"He drink no water--he is adapt' for sand storm--"
"Proves nothing! There's not enough water to waste any where on this desiccated pill called Mars. We'd call all of it desert on earth, you know." He paused. "Anyway, after the sand storm blew over, a little wind kept blowing in our faces, not strong enough to stir the sand. But suddenly things came drifting along from the Xanthus cliffs--small, transparent spheres, for all the world like glass tennis balls! But light--they were almost light enough to float even in this thin air--empty, too; at least, I cracked open a couple and nothing came out but a bad smell. I asked Tweel about them, but all he said was 'No, no, no,' which I took to mean that he knew nothing about them. So they went bouncing by like tumbleweeds, or like soap bubbles, and we plugged on toward Xanthus. Tweel pointed at one of the crystal balls once and said 'rock,' but I was too tired to argue with him. Later I discovered what he meant.
"We came to the bottom of the Xanthus cliffs finally, when there wasn't much daylight left. I decided to sleep on the plateau if possible; anything dangerous, I reasoned, would be more likely to prowl through the vegetation of the Mare Chronium than the sand of Xanthus. Not that I'd seen a single sign of menace, except the rope-armed black thing that had trapped Tweel, and apparently that didn't prowl at all, but lured its victims within reach. It couldn't lure me while I slept, especially as Tweel didn't seem to sleep at all, but simply sat patiently around all night. I wondered how the creature had managed to trap Tweel, but there wasn't any way of asking him. I found that out too, later; it's devilish!
"However, we were ambling around the base of the Xanthus barrier looking for an easy spot to climb. At least, I was. Tweel could have leaped it easily, for the cliffs were lower than Thyle--perhaps sixty feet. I found a place and started up, swearing at the water tank strapped to my back--it didn't bother me except when climbing--and suddenly I heard a sound that I thought I recognized!
"You know how deceptive sounds are in this thin air. A shot sounds like the pop of a cork. But this sound was the drone of a rocket, and sure enough, there went our second auxiliary about ten miles to westward, between me and the sunset!"
"Vas me!" said Putz. "I hunt for you."
"Yeah; I knew that, but what good did it do me? I hung on to the cliff and yelled and waved with one hand. Tweel saw it too, and set up a trilling and twittering, leaping to the top of the barrier and then high into the air. And while I watched, the machine droned on into the shadows to the south.
"I scrambled to the top of the cliff. Tweel was still pointing and trilling excitedly, shooting up toward the sky and coming down head-on to stick upside down on his beak in the sand. I pointed toward the south and at myself, and he said, 'Yes--Yes--Yes'; but somehow I gathered that he thought the flying thing was a relative of mine, probably a parent. Perhaps I did his intellect an injustice; I think now that I did.
"I was bitterly disappointed by the failure to attract attention. I pulled out my thermo-skin bag and crawled into it, as the night chill was already apparent. Tweel stuck his beak into the sand and drew up his legs and arms and looked for all the world like one of those leafless shrubs out there. I think he stayed that way all night."
"Protective mimicry!" ejaculated Leroy. "See? He is desert creature!"
"In the morning," resumed Jarvis, "we started off again. We hadn't gone a hundred yards into Xanthus when I saw something queer! This is one thing Putz didn't photograph, I'll wager!
"There was a line of little pyramids--tiny ones, not more than six inches high, stretching across Xanthus as far as I could see! Little buildings made of pygmy bricks, they were, hollow inside and truncated, or at least broken at the top and empty. I pointed at them and said 'What?' to Tweel, but he gave some negative twitters to indicate, I suppose, that he didn't know. So off we went, following the row of pyramids because they ran north, and I was going north.
"Man, we trailed that line for hours! After a while, I noticed another queer thing: they were getting larger. Same number of bricks in each one, but the bricks were larger.
"By noon they were shoulder high. I looked into a couple--all just the same, broken at the top and empty. I examined a brick or two as well; they were silica, and old as creation itself!"
"How you know?" asked Leroy.
"They were weathered--edges rounded. Silica doesn't weather easily even on earth, and in this climate--!"
"How old you think?"
"Fifty thousand--a hundred thousand years. How can I tell? The little ones we saw in the morning were older--perhaps ten times as old. Crumbling. How old would that make them? Half a million years? Who knows?" Jarvis paused a moment. "Well," he resumed, "we followed the line. Tweel pointed at them and said 'rock' once or twice, but he'd done that many times before. Besides, he was more or less right about these.
"I tried questioning him. I pointed at a pyramid and asked 'People?' and indicated the two of us. He set up a negative sort of clucking and said, 'No, no, no. No one-one-two. No two-two-four,' meanwhile rubbing his stomach. I just stared at him and he went through the business again. 'No one-one-two. No two-two-four.' I just gaped at him."
"That proves it!" exclaimed Harrison. "Nuts!"
"You think so?" queried Jarvis sardonically. "Well, I figured it out different! 'No one-one-two!' You don't get it, of course, do you?"
"Nope--nor do you!"
"I think I do! Tweel was using the few English words he knew to put over a very complex idea. What, let me ask, does mathematics make you think of?"
"Why--of astronomy. Or--or logic!"
"That's it! 'No one-one-two!' Tweel was telling me that the builders of the pyramids weren't people--or that they weren't intelligent, that they weren't reasoning creatures! Get it?"
"Huh! I'll be damned!"
"You probably will."
"Why," put in Leroy, "he rub his belly?"
"Why? Because, my dear biologist, that's where his brains are! Not in his tiny head--in his middle!"
"C'est impossible!"
"Not on Mars, it isn't! This flora and fauna aren't earthly; your biopods prove that!" Jarvis grinned and took up his narrative. "Anyway, we plugged along across Xanthus and in about the middle of the afternoon, something else queer happened. The pyramids ended."
"Ended!"
"Yeah; the queer part was that the last one--and now they were ten-footers--was capped! See? Whatever built it was still inside; we'd trailed 'em from their half-million-year-old origin to the present.
"Tweel and I noticed it about the same time. I yanked out my automatic (I had a clip of Boland explosive bullets in it) and Tweel, quick as a sleight-of-hand trick, snapped a queer little glass revolver out of his bag. It was much like our weapons, except that the grip was larger to accommodate his four-taloned hand. And we held our weapons ready while we sneaked up along the lines of empty pyramids.
"Tweel saw the movement first. The top tiers of bricks were heaving, shaking, and suddenly slid down the sides with a thin crash. And then--something--something was coming out!
"A long, silvery-grey arm appeared, dragging after it an armored body. Armored, I mean, with scales, silver-grey and dull-shining. The arm heaved the body out of the hole; the beast crashed to the sand.
"It was a nondescript creature--body like a big grey cask, arm and a sort of mouth-hole at one end; stiff, pointed tail at the other--and that's all. No other limbs, no eyes, ears, nose--nothing! The thing dragged itself a few yards, inserted its pointed tail in the sand, pushed itself upright, and just sat.
"Tweel and I watched it for ten minutes before it moved. Then, with a creaking and rustling like--oh, like crumpling stiff paper--its arm moved to the mouth-hole and out came a brick! The arm placed the brick carefully on the ground, and the thing was still again.
"Another ten minutes--another brick. Just one of Nature's bricklayers. I was about to slip away and move on when Tweel pointed at the thing and said 'rock'! I went 'huh?' and he said it again. Then, to the accompaniment of some of his trilling, he said, 'No--no--,' and gave two or three whistling breaths.
"Well, I got his meaning, for a wonder! I said, 'No breath?' and demonstrated the word. Tweel was ecstatic; he said, 'Yes, yes, yes! No, no, no breet!' Then he gave a leap and sailed out to land on his nose about one pace from the monster!
"I was startled, you can imagine! The arm was going up for a brick, and I expected to see Tweel caught and mangled, but--nothing happened! Tweel pounded on the creature, and the arm took the brick and placed it neatly beside the first. Tweel rapped on its body again, and said 'rock,' and I got up nerve enough to take a look myself.
"Tweel was right again. The creature was rock, and it didn't breathe!"
"How you know?" snapped Leroy, his black eyes blazing interest.
"Because I'm a chemist. The beast was made of silica! There must have been pure silicon in the sand, and it lived on that. Get it? We, and Tweel, and those plants out there, and even the biopods are carbon life; this thing lived by a different set of chemical reactions. It was silicon life!"
"La vie silicieuse!" shouted Leroy. "I have suspect, and now it is proof! I must go see! Il faut que je--"
"All right! All right!" said Jarvis. "You can go see. Anyhow, there the thing was, alive and yet not alive, moving every ten minutes, and then only to remove a brick. Those bricks were its waste matter. See, Frenchy? We're carbon, and our waste is carbon dioxide, and this thing is silicon, and its waste is silicon dioxide--silica. But silica is a solid, hence the bricks. And it builds itself in, and when it is covered, it moves over to a fresh place to start over. No wonder it creaked! A living creature half a million years old!"
"How you know how old?" Leroy was frantic.
"We trailed its pyramids from the beginning, didn't we? If this weren't the original pyramid builder, the series would have ended somewhere before we found him, wouldn't it?--ended and started over with the small ones. That's simple enough, isn't it?
"But he reproduces, or tries to. Before the third brick came out, there was a little rustle and out popped a whole stream of those little crystal balls. They're his spores, or eggs, or seeds--call 'em what you want. They went bouncing by across Xanthus just as they'd bounced by us back in the Mare Chronium. I've a hunch how they work, too--this is for your information, Leroy. I think the crystal shell of silica is no more than a protective covering, like an eggshell, and that the active principle is the smell inside. It's some sort of gas that attacks silicon, and if the shell is broken near a supply of that element, some reaction starts that ultimately develops into a beast like that one."
"You should try!" exclaimed the little Frenchman. "We must break one to see!"
"Yeah? Well, I did. I smashed a couple against the sand. Would you like to come back in about ten thousand years to see if I planted some pyramid monsters? You'd most likely be able to tell by that time!" Jarvis paused and drew a deep breath. "Lord! That queer creature! Do you picture it? Blind, deaf, nerveless, brainless--just a mechanism, and yet--immortal! Bound to go on making bricks, building pyramids, as long as silicon and oxygen exist, and even afterwards it'll just stop. It won't be dead. If the accidents of a million years bring it its food again, there it'll be, ready to run again, while brains and civilizations are part of the past. A queer beast--yet I met a stranger one!"
"If you did, it must have been in your dreams!" growled Harrison.
"You're right!" said Jarvis soberly. "In a way, you're right. The dream-beast! That's the best name for it--and it's the most fiendish, terrifying creation one could imagine! More dangerous than a lion, more insidious than a snake!"
"Tell me!" begged Leroy. "I must go see!"
"Not this devil!" He paused again. "Well," he resumed, "Tweel and I left the pyramid creature and plowed along through Xanthus. I was tired and a little disheartened by Putz's failure to pick me up, and Tweel's trilling got on my nerves, as did his flying nosedives. So I just strode along without a word, hour after hour across that monotonous desert.
"Toward mid-afternoon we came in sight of a low dark line on the horizon. I knew what it was. It was a canal; I'd crossed it in the rocket and it meant that we were just one-third of the way across Xanthus. Pleasant thought, wasn't it? And still, I was keeping up to schedule.
"We approached the canal slowly; I remembered that this one was bordered by a wide fringe of vegetation and that Mud-heap City was on it.
"I was tired, as I said. I kept thinking of a good hot meal, and then from that I jumped to reflections of how nice and home-like even Borneo would seem after this crazy planet, and from that, to thoughts of little old New York, and then to thinking about a girl I know there--Fancy Long. Know her?"
"Vision entertainer," said Harrison. "I've tuned her in. Nice blonde--dances and sings on the Yerba Mate hour."
"That's her," said Jarvis ungrammatically. "I know her pretty well--just friends, get me?--though she came down to see us off in the Ares. Well, I was thinking about her, feeling pretty lonesome, and all the time we were approaching that line of rubbery plants.
"And then--I said, 'What 'n Hell!' and stared. And there she was--Fancy Long, standing plain as day under one of those crack-brained trees, and smiling and waving just the way I remembered her when we left!"
"Now you're nuts, too!" observed the captain.
"Boy, I almost agreed with you! I stared and pinched myself and closed my eyes and then stared again--and every time, there was Fancy Long smiling and waving! Tweel saw something, too; he was trilling and clucking away, but I scarcely heard him. I was bounding toward her over the sand, too amazed even to ask myself questions.
"I wasn't twenty feet from her when Tweel caught me with one of his flying leaps. He grabbed my arm, yelling, 'No--no--no!' in his squeaky voice. I tried to shake him off--he was as light as if he were built of bamboo--but he dug his claws in and yelled. And finally some sort of sanity returned to me and I stopped less than ten feet from her. There she stood, looking as solid as Putz's head!"
"Vot?" said the engineer.
"She smiled and waved, and waved and smiled, and I stood there dumb as Leroy, while Tweel squeaked and chattered. I knew it couldn't be real, yet--there she was!
"Finally I said, 'Fancy! Fancy Long!' She just kept on smiling and waving, but looking as real as if I hadn't left her thirty-seven million miles away.
"Tweel had his glass pistol out, pointing it at her. I grabbed his arm, but he tried to push me away. He pointed at her and said, 'No breet! No breet!' and I understood that he meant that the Fancy Long thing wasn't alive. Man, my head was whirling!
"Still, it gave me the jitters to see him pointing his weapon at her. I don't know why I stood there watching him take careful aim, but I did. Then he squeezed the handle of his weapon; there was a little puff of steam, and Fancy Long was gone! And in her place was one of those writhing, black, rope-armed horrors like the one I'd saved Tweel from!
"The dream-beast! I stood there dizzy, watching it die while Tweel trilled and whistled. Finally he touched my arm, pointed at the twisting thing, and said, 'You one-one-two, he one-one-two.' After he'd repeated it eight or ten times, I got it. Do any of you?"
"Oui!" shrilled Leroy. "Moi--je le comprends! He mean you think of something, the beast he know, and you see it! Un chien--a hungry dog, he would see the big bone with meat! Or smell it--not?"
"Right!" said Jarvis. "The dream-beast uses its victim's longings and desires to trap its prey. The bird at nesting season would see its mate, the fox, prowling for its own prey, would see a helpless rabbit!"
"How he do?" queried Leroy.
"How do I know? How does a snake back on earth charm a bird into its very jaws? And aren't there deep-sea fish that lure their victims into their mouths? Lord!" Jarvis shuddered. "Do you see how insidious the monster is? We're warned now--but henceforth we can't trust even our eyes. You might see me--I might see one of you--and back of it may be nothing but another of those black horrors!"
"How'd your friend know?" asked the captain abruptly.
"Tweel? I wonder! Perhaps he was thinking of something that couldn't possibly have interested me, and when I started to run, he realized that I saw something different and was warned. Or perhaps the dream-beast can only project a single vision, and Tweel saw what I saw--or nothing. I couldn't ask him. But it's just another proof that his intelligence is equal to ours or greater."
"He's daffy, I tell you!" said Harrison. "What makes you think his intellect ranks with the human?"
"Plenty of things! First, the pyramid-beast. He hadn't seen one before; he said as much. Yet he recognized it as a dead-alive automaton of silicon."
"He could have heard of it," objected Harrison. "He lives around here, you know."
"Well how about the language? I couldn't pick up a single idea of his and he learned six or seven words of mine. And do you realize what complex ideas he put over with no more than those six or seven words? The pyramid-monster--the dream-beast! In a single phrase he told me that one was a harmless automaton and the other a deadly hypnotist. What about that?"
"Huh!" said the captain.
"Huh if you wish! Could you have done it knowing only six words of English? Could you go even further, as Tweel did, and tell me that another creature was of a sort of intelligence so different from ours that understanding was impossible--even more impossible than that between Tweel and me?"
"Eh? What was that?"
"Later. The point I'm making is that Tweel and his race are worthy of our friendship. Somewhere on Mars--and you'll find I'm right--is a civilization and culture equal to ours, and maybe more than equal. And communication is possible between them and us; Tweel proves that. It may take years of patient trial, for their minds are alien, but less alien than the next minds we encountered--if they are minds."
"The next ones? What next ones?"
"The people of the mud cities along the canals." Jarvis frowned, then resumed his narrative. "I thought the dream-beast and the silicon-monster were the strangest beings conceivable, but I was wrong. These creatures are still more alien, less understandable than either and far less comprehensible than Tweel, with whom friendship is possible, and even, by patience and concentration, the exchange of ideas.
"Well," he continued, "we left the dream-beast dying, dragging itself back into its hole, and we moved toward the canal. There was a carpet of that queer walking-grass scampering out of our way, and when we reached the bank, there was a yellow trickle of water flowing. The mound city I'd noticed from the rocket was a mile or so to the right and I was curious enough to want to take a look at it.
"It had seemed deserted from my previous glimpse of it, and if any creatures were lurking in it--well, Tweel and I were both armed. And by the way, that crystal weapon of Tweel's was an interesting device; I took a look at it after the dream-beast episode. It fired a little glass splinter, poisoned, I suppose, and I guess it held at least a hundred of 'em to a load. The propellent was steam--just plain steam!"
"Shteam!" echoed Putz. "From vot come, shteam?"
"From water, of course! You could see the water through the transparent handle and about a gill of another liquid, thick and yellowish. When Tweel squeezed the handle--there was no trigger--a drop of water and a drop of the yellow stuff squirted into the firing chamber, and the water vaporized--pop!--like that. It's not so difficult; I think we could develop the same principle. Concentrated sulphuric acid will heat water almost to boiling, and so will quicklime, and there's potassium and sodium--
"Of course, his weapon hadn't the range of mine, but it wasn't so bad in this thin air, and it did hold as many shots as a cowboy's gun in a Western movie. It was effective, too, at least against Martian life; I tried it out, aiming at one of the crazy plants, and darned if the plant didn't wither up and fall apart! That's why I think the glass splinters were poisoned.
"Anyway, we trudged along toward the mud-heap city and I began to wonder whether the city builders dug the canals. I pointed to the city and then at the canal, and Tweel said 'No--no--no!' and gestured toward the south. I took it to mean that some other race had created the canal system, perhaps Tweel's people. I don't know; maybe there's still another intelligent race on the planet, or a dozen others. Mars is a queer little world.
"A hundred yards from the city we crossed a sort of road--just a hard-packed mud trail, and then, all of a sudden, along came one of the mound builders!
"Man, talk about fantastic beings! It looked rather like a barrel trotting along on four legs with four other arms or tentacles. It had no head, just body and members and a row of eyes completely around it. The top end of the barrel-body was a diaphragm stretched as tight as a drum head, and that was all. It was pushing a little coppery cart and tore right past us like the proverbial bat out of Hell. It didn't even notice us, although I thought the eyes on my side shifted a little as it passed.
"A moment later another came along, pushing another empty cart. Same thing--it just scooted past us. Well, I wasn't going to be ignored by a bunch of barrels playing train, so when the third one approached, I planted myself in the way--ready to jump, of course, if the thing didn't stop.
"But it did. It stopped and set up a sort of drumming from the diaphragm on top. And I held out both hands and said, 'We are friends!' And what do you suppose the thing did?"
"Said, 'Pleased to meet you,' I'll bet!" suggested Harrison.
"I couldn't have been more surprised if it had! It drummed on its diaphragm, and then suddenly boomed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and gave its pushcart a vicious poke at me! I jumped aside, and away it went while I stared dumbly after it.
"A minute later another one came hurrying along. This one didn't pause, but simply drummed out, 'We are v-r-r-riends!' and scurried by. How did it learn the phrase? Were all of the creatures in some sort of communication with each other? Were they all parts of some central organism? I don't know, though I think Tweel does.
"Anyway, the creatures went sailing past us, every one greeting us with the same statement. It got to be funny; I never thought to find so many friends on this God-forsaken ball! Finally I made a puzzled gesture to Tweel; I guess he understood, for he said, 'One-one-two--yes!--two-two-four--no!' Get it?"
"Sure," said Harrison, "It's a Martian nursery rhyme."
"Yeah! Well, I was getting used to Tweel's symbolism, and I figured it out this way. 'One-one-two--yes!' The creatures were intelligent. 'Two-two-four--no!' Their intelligence was not of our order, but something different and beyond the logic of two and two is four. Maybe I missed his meaning. Perhaps he meant that their minds were of low degree, able to figure out the simple things--'One-one-two--yes!'--but not more difficult things--'Two-two-four--no!' But I think from what we saw later that he meant the other.
"After a few moments, the creatures came rushing back--first one, then another. Their pushcarts were full of stones, sand, chunks of rubbery plants, and such rubbish as that. They droned out their friendly greeting, which didn't really sound so friendly, and dashed on. The third one I assumed to be my first acquaintance and I decided to have another chat with him. I stepped into his path again and waited.
"Up he came, booming out his 'We are v-r-r-riends' and stopped. I looked at him; four or five of his eyes looked at me. He tried his password again and gave a shove on his cart, but I stood firm. And then the--the dashed creature reached out one of his arms, and two finger-like nippers tweaked my nose!"
"Haw!" roared Harrison. "Maybe the things have a sense of beauty!"
"Laugh!" grumbled Jarvis. "I'd already had a nasty bump and a mean frostbite on that nose. Anyway, I yelled 'Ouch!' and jumped aside and the creature dashed away; but from then on, their greeting was 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' Queer beasts!
"Tweel and I followed the road squarely up to the nearest mound. The creatures were coming and going, paying us not the slightest attention, fetching their loads of rubbish. The road simply dived into an opening, and slanted down like an old mine, and in and out darted the barrel-people, greeting us with their eternal phrase.
"I looked in; there was a light somewhere below, and I was curious to see it. It didn't look like a flame or torch, you understand, but more like a civilized light, and I thought that I might get some clue as to the creatures' development. So in I went and Tweel tagged along, not without a few trills and twitters, however.
"The light was curious; it sputtered and flared like an old arc light, but came from a single black rod set in the wall of the corridor. It was electric, beyond doubt. The creatures were fairly civilized, apparently.
"Then I saw another light shining on something that glittered and I went on to look at that, but it was only a heap of shiny sand. I turned toward the entrance to leave, and the Devil take me if it wasn't gone!
"I suppose the corridor had curved, or I'd stepped into a side passage. Anyway, I walked back in that direction I thought we'd come, and all I saw was more dimlit corridor. The place was a labyrinth! There was nothing but twisting passages running every way, lit by occasional lights, and now and then a creature running by, sometimes with a pushcart, sometimes without.
"Well, I wasn't much worried at first. Tweel and I had only come a few steps from the entrance. But every move we made after that seemed to get us in deeper. Finally I tried following one of the creatures with an empty cart, thinking that he'd be going out for his rubbish, but he ran around aimlessly, into one passage and out another. When he started dashing around a pillar like one of these Japanese waltzing mice, I gave up, dumped my water tank on the floor, and sat down.
"Tweel was as lost as I. I pointed up and he said 'No--no--no!' in a sort of helpless trill. And we couldn't get any help from the natives. They paid no attention at all, except to assure us they were friends--ouch!
"Lord! I don't know how many hours or days we wandered around there! I slept twice from sheer exhaustion; Tweel never seemed to need sleep. We tried following only the upward corridors, but they'd run uphill a ways and then curve downwards. The temperature in that damned ant hill was constant; you couldn't tell night from day and after my first sleep I didn't know whether I'd slept one hour or thirteen, so I couldn't tell from my watch whether it was midnight or noon.
"We saw plenty of strange things. There were machines running in some of the corridors, but they didn't seem to be doing anything--just wheels turning. And several times I saw two barrel-beasts with a little one growing between them, joined to both."
"Parthenogenesis!" exulted Leroy. "Parthenogenesis by budding like les tulipes!"
"If you say so, Frenchy," agreed Jarvis. "The things never noticed us at all, except, as I say, to greet us with 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' They seemed to have no home-life of any sort, but just scurried around with their pushcarts, bringing in rubbish. And finally I discovered what they did with it.
"We'd had a little luck with a corridor, one that slanted upwards for a great distance. I was feeling that we ought to be close to the surface when suddenly the passage debouched into a domed chamber, the only one we'd seen. And man!--I felt like dancing when I saw what looked like daylight through a crevice in the roof.
"There was a--a sort of machine in the chamber, just an enormous wheel that turned slowly, and one of the creatures was in the act of dumping his rubbish below it. The wheel ground it with a crunch--sand, stones, plants, all into powder that sifted away somewhere. While we watched, others filed in, repeating the process, and that seemed to be all. No rhyme nor reason to the whole thing--but that's characteristic of this crazy planet. And there was another fact that's almost too bizarre to believe.
"One of the creatures, having dumped his load, pushed his cart aside with a crash and calmly shoved himself under the wheel! I watched him being crushed, too stupefied to make a sound, and a moment later, another followed him! They were perfectly methodical about it, too; one of the cartless creatures took the abandoned pushcart.
"Tweel didn't seem surprised; I pointed out the next suicide to him, and he just gave the most human-like shrug imaginable, as much as to say, 'What can I do about it?' He must have known more or less about these creatures.
"Then I saw something else. There was something beyond the wheel, something shining on a sort of low pedestal. I walked over; there was a little crystal about the size of an egg, fluorescing to beat Tophet. The light from it stung my hands and face, almost like a static discharge, and then I noticed another funny thing. Remember that wart I had on my left thumb? Look!" Jarvis extended his hand. "It dried up and fell off--just like that! And my abused nose--say, the pain went out of it like magic! The thing had the property of hard x-rays or gamma radiations, only more so; it destroyed diseased tissue and left healthy tissue unharmed!
"I was thinking what a present that'd be to take back to Mother Earth when a lot of racket interrupted. We dashed back to the other side of the wheel in time to see one of the pushcarts ground up. Some suicide had been careless, it seems.
"Then suddenly the creatures were booming and drumming all around us and their noise was decidedly menacing. A crowd of them advanced toward us; we backed out of what I thought was the passage we'd entered by, and they came rumbling after us, some pushing carts and some not. Crazy brutes! There was a whole chorus of 'We are v-r-r-riends! Ouch!' I didn't like the 'ouch'; it was rather suggestive.
"Tweel had his glass gun out and I dumped my water tank for greater freedom and got mine. We backed up the corridor with the barrel-beasts following--about twenty of them. Queer thing--the ones coming in with loaded carts moved past us inches away without a sign.
"Tweel must have noticed that. Suddenly, he snatched out that glowing coal cigar-lighter of his and touched a cart-load of plant limbs. Puff! The whole load was burning--and the crazy beast pushing it went right along without a change of pace! It created some disturbance among our 'V-r-r-riends,' however--and then I noticed the smoke eddying and swirling past us, and sure enough, there was the entrance!
"I grabbed Tweel and out we dashed and after us our twenty pursuers. The daylight felt like Heaven, though I saw at first glance that the sun was all but set, and that was bad, since I couldn't live outside my thermo-skin bag in a Martian night--at least, without a fire.
"And things got worse in a hurry. They cornered us in an angle between two mounds, and there we stood. I hadn't fired nor had Tweel; there wasn't any use in irritating the brutes. They stopped a little distance away and began their booming about friendship and ouches.
"Then things got still worse! A barrel-brute came out with a pushcart and they all grabbed into it and came out with handfuls of foot-long copper darts--sharp-looking ones--and all of a sudden one sailed past my ear--zing! And it was shoot or die then.
"We were doing pretty well for a while. We picked off the ones next to the pushcart and managed to keep the darts at a minimum, but suddenly there was a thunderous booming of 'v-r-r-riends' and 'ouches,' and a whole army of 'em came out of their hole.
"Man! We were through and I knew it! Then I realized that Tweel wasn't. He could have leaped the mound behind us as easily as not. He was staying for me!
"Say, I could have cried if there'd been time! I'd liked Tweel from the first, but whether I'd have had gratitude to do what he was doing--suppose I had saved him from the first dream-beast--he'd done as much for me, hadn't he? I grabbed his arm, and said 'Tweel,' and pointed up, and he understood. He said, 'No--no--no, Tick!' and popped away with his glass pistol.
"What could I do? I'd be a goner anyway when the sun set, but I couldn't explain that to him. I said, 'Thanks, Tweel. You're a man!' and felt that I wasn't paying him any compliment at all. A man! There are mighty few men who'd do that.
"So I went 'bang' with my gun and Tweel went 'puff' with his, and the barrels were throwing darts and getting ready to rush us, and booming about being friends. I had given up hope. Then suddenly an angel dropped right down from Heaven in the shape of Putz, with his under-jets blasting the barrels into very small pieces!
"Wow! I let out a yell and dashed for the rocket; Putz opened the door and in I went, laughing and crying and shouting! It was a moment or so before I remembered Tweel; I looked around in time to see him rising in one of his nosedives over the mound and away.
"I had a devil of a job arguing Putz into following! By the time we got the rocket aloft, darkness was down; you know how it comes here--like turning off a light. We sailed out over the desert and put down once or twice. I yelled 'Tweel!' and yelled it a hundred times, I guess. We couldn't find him; he could travel like the wind and all I got--or else I imagined it--was a faint trilling and twittering drifting out of the south. He'd gone, and damn it! I wish--I wish he hadn't!"
The four men of the Ares were silent--even the sardonic Harrison. At last little Leroy broke the stillness.
"I should like to see," he murmured.
"Yeah," said Harrison. "And the wart-cure. Too bad you missed that; it might be the cancer cure they've been hunting for a century and a half."
"Oh, that!" muttered Jarvis gloomily. "That's what started the fight!" He drew a glistening object from his pocket.
"Here it is."
THE LAKE OF LIGHT
By Jack Williamson
In the frozen wastes at the bottom of the world two explorers find a strange pool of white fire--and have a strange adventure.
The roar of the motor rang loud in the frosty air above a desert of ice. The sky above us was a deep purple-blue; the red sun hung like a crimson eye low in the north. Three thousand feet below, through a hazy blue mist of wind-whipped, frozen vapor, was the rugged wilderness of black ice-peaks and blizzard-carved hummocks of snow--a grim, undulating waste, black and yellow, splotched with crystal white. The icy wind howled dismally through the struts. We were flying above the weird ice-mountains of the Enderby quadrant of Antarctica.
That was a perilous flight, across the blizzard-whipped bottom of the world. In all the years of polar exploration by air, since Byrd's memorable flights, this area had never been crossed. The intrepid Britisher, Major Meriden, with the daring American aviatrix whom the world had known as Mildred Cross before she married him, had flown into it nineteen years before--and like many others they had never returned.
Faintly, above the purring drone of the motor, I heard Ray Summers' shout. I drew my gaze from the desolate plateau of ice below and leaned forward. His lean, fur-hooded face was turned back toward me. A mittened hand was pointing, and thin lips moved in words that I did not hear above the roar of the engine and the scream of the wind.
I turned and looked out to the right, past the shimmering silver disk of the propeller. Under the blue haze of ice-crystals in the air, the ice lay away in a vast undulating plain of black and yellow, broken with splotches of prismatic whiteness, lying away in frozen desolation to the rim of the cold violet sky. Rising against that sky I saw a curious thing.
It was a mountain of fire!
Beyond the desert of ice, a great conical peak pointed straight into the amethystine gloom of the polar heavens. It was brilliantly white, a finger of milky fire, a sharp cone of pure light. It shone with white radiance. It was brighter, far brighter, than is the sacred cone of Fujiyama in the vivid day of Japan.
* * * * *
For many minutes I stared in wonder at it. Far away it was; it looked very small. It was like a little heap of light poured from the hand of a fire-god. What it might be, I could not imagine. At first sight, I imagined it might be a volcano with streams of incandescent lava flowing down the side. I knew that this continent of mystery boasted Mt. Erebus and other active craters. But there was none of the smoke or lurid yellow flame which accompanies volcanic eruptions.
I was still watching it, and wondering, when the catastrophe took place--the catastrophe which hurled us into a mad extravaganza of amazing adventure.
Our little two-place amphibian was flying smoothly, through air unusually good for this continent of storms. The twelve cylinders of the motor had been firing regularly since we took off from Byrd's old station at Little America fifteen hours before. We had crossed the pole in safety. It looked as if we might succeed in this attempt to penetrate the last white spot on the map. Then it Happened.
A sudden crack of snapping metal rang out sharp as a pistol report. A bright blade of metal flashed past the wing-struts, to fall in a flashing arc. The motor broke abruptly into a mad, deep-voiced roar. Terrific vibration shook the ship, until I feared that it would go to pieces.
Ray Summers, with his usual quick efficiency, cut the throttle. Quickly the motor slowed to idling speed; the vibration stopped. A last cough of the engine, and there was no sound save the shrill screaming of the wind in the gloomy twilight of this unknown land beyond the pole.
"What in the devil!" I exclaimed.
"The prop! See!" Ray pointed ahead.
I looked, and the dreadful truth flashed upon me. The steel propeller was gone, or half of it at least. One blade was broken off at a jagged line just above the hub.
* * * * *
"The propeller! What made it break? I've never heard--"
"Search me!" Ray grinned. "The important thing is that it did. It was all-metal, of course, tested and guaranteed. The guarantee isn't worth much here. A flaw in the forging, perhaps, that escaped detection. And this low temperature. Makes metal as brittle as glass. And the thing may have been crystallized by the vibration."
The plane was coming down in a shallow glide. I looked out at the grim expanse of black ice-crags and glistening snow below us, and it was far from a comforting prospect. But I had a huge amount of confidence in Ray Summers. I have known him since the day he appeared, from his father's great Arizona ranch, to be a freshman in the School of Mines at El Paso, where I was then an instructor in geology. We have knocked about queer corners of the world together for a good many years. But he is still but a great boy, with the bluff, simple manners of the West.
"Do you think we can land?" I asked.
"Looks like we've got to," he said, grimly.
"And what after that?"
"How should I know? We have the sledge, tent, furs. Food, and fuel for the primus to last a week. There's the rifle, but it must be a thousand miles to anything to shoot. We can do our best."
"We should have had an extra prop."
"Of course. But it was so many pounds, when every pound counted. And who knew the thing would break?"
"We'll never get out on a week's provisions."
"Not a shot! Too bad to disappoint Captain Harper." Ray grinned wanly. "He ought to have the Albatross around there by this time, waiting for us." The Albatross was the ship which had left us at Little America a few months before, to steam around and pick us up at our destination beyond Enderby Land. "We're in the same boat with Major Meriden and his wife--and all those others. Lost without a trace."
"You've read Scott's diary--that he wrote after he visited the pole in 1912--the one they found with the bodies?"
"Yes. Not altogether cheerful. But we won't be trying to get out. No use of that." He looked at me suddenly, grinning again. "Say, Jim, why not try for that shining mountain we saw? It looks queer enough to be interesting. We ought to make it in a week."
"I'm with you," I said.
* * * * *
I did not speak again, for the jagged ice-peaks were coming rather near. I held my breath as the little plane veered around a slender black spire and dropped toward a tiny scrap of smooth snow among the ice-hummocks. I might have spared my anxiety. Under Ray's consumately skilful piloting, the skids struck the snow with hardly a shock. We glided swiftly over the ice and came to rest just short of a yawning crevasse.
"Suppose," said Ray, "that we spend the first night in the plane. We are tired already. We can keep warm here, and sleep. We've plenty of ice to melt for water. Then we're off for the shining mountain."
I agreed: Ray Summers is usually right. We got out the sledge, packed it, took our bearings, and made all preparations for a start to the luminous mountain, which was about a hundred miles away. The thermometer stood at twenty below, but we were comfortable enough in our furs as we ate a scanty supper and went to sleep in the cabin of the plane.
We started promptly the next morning, after draining the last of the hot chocolate from our vacuum bottles, which we left behind. We had a light but powerful sporting rifle, with telescopic sights, and several hundred rounds of ammunition. Ray put them in the pack, though I insisted that we would never need them, unless a quick way out of our predicament.
"No, Jim," he said. "We take 'em along. We don't know what we're going to find at the shining mountain."
The air was bitterly cold as we set out: it was twenty-five below and a sharp wind was blowing. Only our toiling at the sledge kept us warm. We covered eighteen miles that day, and made a good camp in the lee of a bare stone ridge.
That night there was a slight fall of snow. When we went on it was nearly thirty-five degrees below zero. The layer of fresh snow concealed irregularities in the ice, making our pulling very hard. After an exhausting day we had made hardly fifteen miles.
* * * * *
On the following day the sky was covered with gray clouds, and a bitterly cold wind blew. We should have remained in the tent, but the shortage of food made it imperative that we keep moving. We felt immensely better after a reckless, generous fill of hot pemmican stew; but the next morning my feet were so painful from frost-bite that I could hardly get on my fur boots.
Walking was very painful to me that day, but we made a good distance, having come to smoother ice. Ray was very kind in caring for me. I became discouraged about going on at all: it was very painful, and I knew there was no hope of getting out. I tried to get some of our morphine tablets, but Ray had them, and refused to be convinced that he ought to go on without me.
On the next march we came in sight of the luminous mountain, which cheered me considerably. It was a curious thing, indeed. A straight-sided cone of light it was, rather steeper than the average volcano. Its point was sharp, its sides smooth as if cut with a mammoth plane. And it shone with a pure white light, with a steady and unchanging milky radiance. It rose out of the black and dull yellow of the ice wilderness like a white finger of hope.
The next morning it was a little warmer. Ray had been caring for my feet very attentively, but it took me nearly two hours to get on my footgear. Again I tried to get him to leave me, but he refused.
We arrived at the base of the shining mountain in three more marches. On the last night the fuel for the primus was all gone, having been used up during the very cold weather, and we were unable to melt water to drink. We munched the last of our pemmican dry.
* * * * *
A few minutes after we had started on the last morning, Ray stopped suddenly.
"Look at that!" he cried.
I saw what he had seen--the wreck of an airplane, the wings crumpled up and blackened with fire. We limped up to it.
"A Harley biplane!" Ray exclaimed. "That is Major Meriden's ship! And look at that wing! It looks like it's been in an electric furnace!"
I examined the metal wing; saw that it had been blackened with heat. The metal was fused and twisted.
"I've seen a good many wrecks, Jim. I've seen planes that burned as they fell. But nothing like that. The fuselage and engines were not even afire. Jim, something struck out from that shining mountain and brought them down!"
"Are they--" I began.
Ray was poking about in the snow in the cockpits.
"No. Not here. Probably would have been better for them if they had been killed in the plane. Quick and merciful."
He examined the engines and propellers.
"No. Seems to be nothing wrong. Something struck them down!"
Soon we went on.
The shining mountain rose before us like a great cone of fire. It must have been three thousand feet high, and about that in diameter at the bottom. Its walls were as smooth and straight as though turned from milky rock crystal in a gigantic lathe. It shone with a steady, brilliantly white radiance.
"That's no natural hill!" Ray grunted beside me as we limped on.
We were less than a mile from the foot of the cone of fire. Soon we observed another remarkable thing about it. It seemed that a straight band of silvery metal rose from the snow about its foot.
"Has it a wall around it?" I exclaimed.
"Evidently," said Ray. "Looks as if it's built on a round metal platform. But by whom? When? Why?"
* * * * *
We approached the curious wall. It was of a white metal, apparently aluminum, or a silvery alloy of that metal. In places it was twenty-five feet high, but more usually the snow and ice was banked high against it. The smooth white wall of the gleaming mountain stood several hundred yards back from the wall.
"Let's have a look over it." Ray suggested. "We can get up on that hummock, against it. You know, this place must have been built by men!"
We clambered up over the ice, as he suggested, until our heads came above the top of the wall.
"A lake of fire!" cried Ray.
Indeed, a lake of liquid fire lay before us. The white aluminum wall was hardly a foot thick. It formed a great circular tank, nearly a mile across, with the cone of white fire rising in the center. And the tank was filled, to within a foot of the top, with shimmeringly brilliant white fluid, bright and luminous as the cone--liquid light!
Ray dipped a hand into it. The hand came up with fingers of fire, radiant, gleaming, with shining drops falling from them. With a spasmodic effort, he flung off the luminous drops, rubbed his hand on his garments, and got it back into its fur mitten.
"Gee, it's cold!" he muttered. "Freeze the horns off a brass billy-goat!"
"Cold light!" I exclaimed. "What wouldn't a bottle of that stuff be worth to a chemist back in the States!"
"That cone must be a factory to make the stuff." Ray suggested, hugging his hand. "They might pump the liquid up to the top, and then let it trickle down over the sides: that would explain why the cone is so bright. The stuff might absorb sunlight, like barium sulphide. And there could be chemical action with the air, under the actinic rays."
"Well, if somebody's making cold light, where does he use it?"
"I'd like to find out, and strike him for a hot meal," Ray said, grinning. "It's too cold to live on top of the ground around here. They must run it down in a cave."
"Then let's find the hole."
"You know it's possible we won't be welcome. This mountain of light may be connected with the vanishing of all the aviators. We'd better take along the rifle."
* * * * *
We set off around just outside the white metal wall. The snow and ice was irregularly banked against it, but the wall itself was smooth and unbroken. We had limped along for some two miles, or more than halfway around the amazing lake of light. I had begun to doubt that we would find anything.
Then we came to a square metal tower, ten feet on a side, that rose just outside the silvery wall, to a level with its top. The ice was low here; the tower rose twenty feet above its unequal surface. We found metal flanges riveted to its side, like the steps of a ladder. They were most inconveniently placed, nearly four feet apart; but we were able to climb them, and to look down the shaft.
It was a straight-sided pit, evidently some hundreds of feet deep. We could see a tiny square of light at the bottom, very far away. The flanges ran down the side forming the rungs of a ladder that gave access to whatever lay at the bottom.
Without hesitation, Ray climbed over the side and started down. I followed him, feeling a great relief in getting out of the freezing wind. Ray had the rifle and ammunition strapped to his back, along with a few other articles; and I had a small pack. We had abandoned the sledge, with the useless stove and the most of our instruments. Our food was all gone.
The metal flanges were fully four feet apart, and it was not easy to scramble down from one to another; certainly not easy for one who was cold, hungry, thirsty, worn out with a week of exhausting marches, and suffering the torture of frozen feet.
"You know, this thing was not built by men," Ray observed.
"Not built by men? What do you mean?"
"Men would have put the steps closer together. Jim, I'm afraid we are up against something--well--that we aren't used to."
"If men didn't build this, what did?" I was astounded.
"Search me! This continent has been cut off from the rest of the world for geologic ages. Such life as has been found here is not common to the rest of the earth. It is not impossible that some form of life, isolated here, has developed intelligence and acquired the power to erect that cone of light--and to burn the wing off a metal airplane."
My thoughts whirled madly as we clambered down the shaft.
* * * * *
It must have taken us an hour to reach the bottom. I did not count the steps, but it must have been at least a thousand feet. The air grew rapidly warmer as we descended. We both took off most of our heavy fur garments, and left them hanging on the rungs.
I was rather nervous. I felt the nearness of an intelligent, hostile power. I had a great fear that the owners of those steps would use them to find us, and then crush us ruthlessly as they had brought down Meriden's plane.
The little square of white light below grew larger. Finally I saw Ray swing off and stand on his feet in a flood of white radiance below me. The air was warm, moist, laden with a subtle unfamiliar fragrance that suggested growing things. Then I stood beside Ray.
We stood on the bare stone floor of a huge cavern. It must have been of volcanic origin. The walls glistened with the sparkling smoothness of volcanic glass. It was a huge space. The black roof was a hundred feet high, or more; the cave was some hundreds of feet wide. And it sloped away from us into dim distance as though leading into huger cavities below.
The light that shone upon us came from an amazing thing--a fall of liquid fire. From the roof plunged a sheer torrent of white brilliantly luminous fluid, falling a hundred feet into a shimmering pool of moon-flame. Shining opalescent mists swirled about it, and the ceaseless roar of it filled the cave with sound. It seemed that a stream of the phosphorescent stuff ran off down the cave from the pool, to light the lower caverns.
"Very clever!" said Ray. "They make the stuff up there at the cone and run it in here to see by."
"This warm air feels mighty good," I remarked, pulling off another garment.
Ray sniffed the air. "A curious odor. Smells like something growing. Where anything is growing there ought to be something to eat. Let's see what we can find."
Only black obsidian covered the floor about us. Cautiously we skirted the overflowing pool of white fire, and followed down the stream of it that flowed toward the inner cavern. We had gone but a few hundred yards when suddenly Ray stopped me with a hand on my arm.
"Lie flat!" he hissed. "Quick!"
He dived behind a huge mass of fire-born granite. I flung myself down beside him.
"Something is coming up the trail by the shining river. And it isn't a man! It's between us and the light; we should be able to see it."
* * * * *
Soon I heard a curious scraping sound, and a little tinkle of metal. I caught a whiff of a powerful odor--a strange, fishy odor--so strong that it almost knocked me down.
The thing that made the scraping and the tinkle and the smell came into view. The sight of it sickened me with horror.
It was far larger than a man; its body was heavy as a horse's, but nearer the ground. In form it suggested a huge crab, though it was not very much like any crustacean I had ever seen. It was mostly red in color, and covered with a huge scarlet shell. It had five pairs of limbs. The two forward pairs had pinchers, seemingly used as hands; it scraped along on the other three pairs. Yard-long antennae, slender and luminously green, wavered above a grotesque head. The many facets of compound eyes stood on the end of foot-long stalks.
The amazing crab-thing wore a metal harness. Bands of silvery aluminum were fastened about its shell, with little cases of white metal dangling to them. In one of its uplifted claws it carried what seemed to be an aluminum bar, two feet long and an inch thick.
It scraped lumberingly past, between us and the racing stream of white fire. It passed less than a dozen feet from us. The curious fishy smell of it was overpowering, disgusting.
Sweat of horror chilled my limbs. The monster emanated power, sinister, malevolent power, power intelligent, alien and hostile to man.
I trembled with the fear that it would see us, but it scrambled grotesquely on. When it was twenty yards past, Ray picked up a block of black lava that lay beneath his hand and hurled it silently and swiftly. It crashed splinteringly on the rocks far beyond the creature, on the other side of the stream of light.
In fascination I watched the monster as it paused as if astonished. The glittering compound eyes twisted about on their stalks, and the long shining green tentacles wavered questioningly. Then the knobbed limbs snapped the white metal tube to a level position. A metallic click came from it.
And a ray of red light, vivid and intense, burst from the tube. It flashed across the river of fire. With a dull, thudding burst it struck the rocks where the stone had fallen. It must have been a ray of concentrated heat. Rocks beneath it flashed into sudden incandescence, splintered and cracked, flowed in molten streams.
* * * * *
In a moment the intensely brilliant ruby ray flashed off. The rocks in the circle where it had struck faded to a dull red and then to blackness, still cracking and crumbling.
To my intense relief, the monstrous crab lumbered on.
"That," Ray whispered, "is what got Major Meriden's airplane wing."
When we could hear its scraping progress no longer, we climbed up from behind our boulder and continued cautiously down the cavern, beside the rushing luminous river. In half a mile we came to a bend. Rounding it, we gazed upon a remarkable sight.
We looked into a huge cavity in the heart of the earth. A vast underground plain lay before us, with the black lava of the roof arching above it. It must have been miles across, though we had no way to measure it, and it stretched down into dim hazy distance. Its level was hundreds of feet below us.
At our feet the glistening river of fire plunged down again in a magnificent flaming fall. Below, its luminous liquid was spread out in rivers and lakes and canals, over all the vast plain. The channels ran through an amazing jungle. It was a forest of fungus, of mushroom things with great fleshy stalks and spreading circular tops. But they were not the sickly white and yellow of ordinary mushrooms, but were of brilliant colors, bright green, flaming scarlet, gold and purple-blue. Huge brilliant yellow stalks, fringed with crimson and black, lifted mauve tops thirty feet or more. It was a veritable forest of flame-bright fungus.
In the center of this weirdly forested subterranean plain was a great lake, filled, not with the flaming liquid, but with dark crystal water. And on the bottom of that lake, clearly visible from the elevation upon which we stood, was a city!
* * * * *
A city below the water! The buildings were upright cylinders in groups of two or three, of dozens, even of hundreds. For miles, the bottom of the great lake was covered with them. They were all of crystal, azure-blue, brilliant as cylinders turned from immense sapphires. They were vividly visible beneath the transparent water. Not one of them broke the surface.
Through the clear black water we saw moving hundreds, thousands of the giant crabs. The crawled over the hard, pebbled bottom of the lake, or swam between the crystal cylinders of the city. They were huge as the one we had seen, with red shells, great ominous looking stalked eyes, luminous green tentacular antennae and knobbed claws on forelimbs.
"Looks as if we've run on something to write home about," Ray muttered in amazement.
"A whole city of them! A whole world! No wonder they could build that cone-mountain for a lighting plant!"
"When they got to knocking down airplanes with that heat-ray," he speculated, "they were probably surprised to find that other animals had developed intelligence."
"Do you suppose those mushroom things are good to eat?"
"We can try and see--if the crabs don't get us first with a heat-ray. I'm hungry enough to try anything!"
Again we cautiously advanced. The river of light fell over a sheer precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many minutes to descend.
At last we stepped off in a little rocky clearing. The forest of brilliant mushrooms rose about us, great fleshy stalks of gold and graceful fringes of black and scarlet about them, with flattened heads of purple.
We started eagerly across toward the fungoid forest. I had visions of tearing off great pieces of soft, golden flesh and filling my aching stomach with it.
We were stopped by a sharp, poignantly eager human cry.
A human being, a girl, darted from among the mushroom stalks and ran across to us. Sobbing out great incoherent cries, she dropped at Ray's feet, wrapped her arms about his knees and clung to him, while her slender body was wracked with sobbing cries.
* * * * *
My first impression was that she was very beautiful--and that impression I was never called upon to revise. About her lithe young body she had the merest scrap of some curious green fabric--ample in the warm air of the great cavern. Luxuriant brown hair fell loose about her white shoulders. She was not quite twenty years old, I supposed; her body was superbly formed, with the graceful curves and the free, smooth movements of a wild thing.
Ray stood motionless for a moment, thunder-struck as I was, while the sobbing girl clung to his knees. Then the astonishment on his face gave place to pity.
"Poor kid!" he murmured.
He bent, took her tenderly by the shoulder, helped her to her feet.
Her beauty burst upon us like a great light. Smoothly white, her skin was, perfect. Wide blue eyes, now appealing, even piteous, looked from beneath a wealth of golden brown hair. White teeth, straight and even, flashed behind the natural crimson of her lips.
She stood staring at Ray, in a sort of enchantment of wonder. An eager light of incredible joy flamed in her amazing eyes; red lips were parted in an unconscious smile of joy. She looked like the troubled princess in the fairy tale, when the prince of her dreams appeared in the flesh.
"God, but you're beautiful!" Ray's words slipped out as if he were hardly conscious of them. He flushed quickly, stepped back a little.
The girl's lips opened. She voiced a curious cry. It was deep toned, pealing with a wonderful timbre. A happy burst of sound, like a baby makes. But strong, ringing, musically golden. And pathetically eager, pitifully glad, so that it brought tears to my eyes, cynical old man that I am.
I saw Ray wipe his eyes.
"Can you talk?" Ray put the question in a clear, deliberate voice, with great kindness ringing in it.
"Talk?" The chiming, golden voice was slow, uncertain. "Talk? Yes. I talked--with mother. But for long--I have had no need to talk."
"Where is your mother?" Ray's voice was gentle.
"She is gone. She was here when I was little." The clear, silvery voice was more certain now. "Once, when I was almost as big as she--she was still. She was cold. She did not move when I called her. The Things took her away. She was dead. She told me that sometime she would be dead."
* * * * *
Bright tears came in the wide blue eyes, trickled down over the perfect face. A pathetic catch was in the deliberate, halting voice. I turned away, and Ray put a handkerchief to his face.
"What is your name? Who are you?" Ray spoke kindly.
"I am Mildred. Mildred Meriden."
"Meriden!" Ray turned to me. "I bet this is a daughter of the major and his wife!"
"Father was the major," the girl said slowly. "He and mother came in a machine that flew, from a far land. The Things burned the machine with the red fire. They came here and the Things kept them. They made mother sing over the water. They killed father. I never saw him."
"I know," Ray, said gently. "We came from the same land. We saw your father's machine above."
"You came from outside! And you are going back? Oh, take me with you! Take me!" Piteous pleading was in her voice. "It is so--lonely since the Things took Mother away. Mother told me that sometime men would come, and take me away to see the people and the outside that she told me of. Oh, please take me!"
"Don't worry! You go along whenever we leave--if we can get out."
"Oh, I am so glad! You are very good!"
Impulsively, she threw her arms around Ray's neck. Gently, he disengaged himself, flushing a little. I noticed, however, that he did not seem particularly displeased.
"But can we get out?"
"Mother and I tried. We could never get out. The Things watch. They make me come to the water to sing, when the great bell rings."
"Are these things goods to eat?" I motioned to the brilliant fungal forest. I had begun to fear that Ray would never get to this very important topic.
Blue eyes regarded me. "Eat? Oh, you are hungry! Come! I have food."
* * * * *
Like a child, she grasped Ray's hand, pulled him toward the mushroom jungle. I followed, and we slipped in between the brilliantly golden, fleshy stalks. They rose to the tangle of bright feathery fringes above, huge and substantial as the trunks of trees.
In a few minutes we came to a wide, shallow canal, metal-walled, through which a slow current of the opalescent, luminous liquid was flowing. We crossed this on a narrow metal foot-bridge, and went on through the brilliant forest.
Suddenly we emerged into a little clearing, with the black waters of the great lake visible beyond it, across a quarter-mile of rocky beach. In the middle of the open space, rose three straight cylinders of azure crystal, side by side. Each must have been twenty feet in diameter, and forty high. They shone with a clear blue light, like the cylindrical buildings we had seen in the strange city of the crab-creatures below the great lake.
Mildred Meriden, the strangely beautiful girl who had known no other world than this amazing cavern empire where giant crabs reigned, beckoned us with unconscious queenly grace to enter the arched door in the blue sapphire wall of her remarkable abode of clustered cylinders.
The crystal of the walls seemed luminous, the lofty cylinders were filled with a liquid, azure radiance. The high round room we entered was strangely furnished. There was a silken couch, a bathing pool of blue crystal filled with sparkling water, a curious chest of drawers made of bright aluminum with a mirror of polished crystal, its top bearing odd combs and other articles. The furnishings must have been done by the giant crabs, under human direction.
Mildred led us quickly across the room, through an arched opening into another. A round aluminum table stood in the center of the room, with two curious metal chairs beside it. Odd metal cabinets stood about the shining blue walls. The girl made us sit down, and put dishes before us.
She gave us each a bowl of thick, sweetish soup, darkly red; placed before us a dish piled high with little circular cakes, crisp and brown, which had a tantalizing fragrance; poured for each of us a transparent crystal goblet full of clear amber drink.
We fell to with enthusiasm and abandon.
"The Things made this place for father," the girl told us, as she watched us eat, attentively replenishing the red soup in the great blue crystal bowl, or the little cakes, or the fragrant amber drink. "They would give him anything he wanted. But he tried to go away with mother, and they killed him."
"We must get out of here," Ray declared when at last we had done. "We must get together a lot of food, and enough clothing for all of us. We ought to be able to make it to the edge of the ice-pack. We've got to give these crab-things the slip; we ought to get off before they know we're here--unless they already do."
Mildred was eagerly attentive: she was so unused to human speech that it took the best of her efforts to understand us, though it seems that her mother had given her quite a wide education. She promised that there would be no difficulty about the food.
"Mother taught me how to fix food," she said. "She always said that sometime men would come, with weapons of fire and great noise that would tear and kill the Things. I have food ready, in bags--more than we can carry. I have, too, the furs that mother and father wore."
She ran into another room and returned with a great pile of fur garments, which we examined and found to be in good condition.
"Now is the time," Ray said. "I'd like to know more about the big crabs, but there'll be a chance for that, later. Mildred is the important thing, now. We must get her out. Then we can tell the world about this place and come back with a bigger expedition."
"You think we can reach the coast?"
"I think so. It might be hard on Mildred. But we will have food; we can probably find fuel for the stove in Meriden's plane, if the tanks were well sealed. And Captain Harper should have a relief party landed and sent to meet us. We should have only three or four hundred miles to go alone."
"Three or four hundred miles, over country like we've been crossing in the last week, with a girl! Ray, we'd never make it!"
"It's the only chance."
I said nothing more. I knew that I could stand no such march on my frozen feet, but I resolved to say nothing about it. I would help them as far as I could, and then walk out of camp some night. Men have done just that.
Mildred brought out sacks of the little cakes, and of a red powder that seemed to be the dried and ground flesh of a crimson mushroom. We made a pack for each of us, as heavy as we could carry.
* * * * *
Just before we were ready to start Ray took off my footgear and treated my feet from his medicine kit. I had feared gangrene, but he assured me that there was no danger if they were well cared for. Walking was still exquisitely painful to me as we slipped out through the arched door and into the fungoid forest beyond the three blue cylinders.
As rapidly and silently as possible we hastened through the brilliant fungous forest, across the river of opalescent liquid, to the foot of the fall of fire. A weird and splendid sight was that sheer arc of shimmering white flame, roaring into a pool of opal light, and surrounded with a mist of moon-flame.
We reached the foot of the metal ladder spiked to the rocks beside the fall and started up immediately. The going was not easy. The packs of food, heavy enough when we were on level ground, were difficult indeed to lift when one was scrambling up over rungs four feet apart.
Ray climbed ahead, with a piece of rope fastened from his waist to Mildred's, so that he could help her if she slipped. I was below the girl. We were halfway up the rock when suddenly a glare of red light shone upon me, casting my shadow sharply on the cliff. I looked up and saw the broad, intensely red beam of a heat-ray like that we had seen the giant crab use.
The ray came, evidently, from the shore of the great lake with its submerged city of blue cylinders. It fell upon the face of the cliff just above us. Quickly the ladder was heated to cherry red. The face of the rock grew incandescent, cracked. Hot sparks rained down upon us.
Slowly the ray moved down, toward us.
"Guess we'd better call it off," said Ray. "They have the advantage right now. Better get to climbing down, Jim. This ladder is going to be burning my hands pretty soon."
* * * * *
I climbed down. Mildred and Ray scrambled down behind me.
The ray followed us, keeping the metal at a cherry red just above Ray's hands.
I looked down and saw a dozen of the giant crabs lumbering up out of the fungoid jungle from the direction of the great lake. Hideous things they were, with staring, stalked eyes, shining green antennae, polished red shells, claw-armed limbs. Like the one that had passed us in the upper cavern, they wore glistening white metal accoutrements.
We clambered down, with the red ray following.
I dropped to the ground among them, wet with the sweat of horror. I reeled in nausea from the intolerable odor of the crab-things; it was indescribable, overpowering.
Curious rasping stridulations came from them, sounds which seemed to serve as means of communication, and which Mildred evidently understood.
"They say that you will not be harmed, but that you must not go out," she called down.
I was seized by the pincher-like claws, held writhing in an unbreakable grasp, while the glittering eyes twisted about, looked at me, and the shining green tentacles wavered questioningly over me. My stomach revolted at the horrible odor.
The crabs tore off my pack, even my clothing. Ray was similarly treated as soon as he reached the ground. Though they took Mildred's pack, they treated her with a curious respect.
In a few minutes they released us. They had taken the packs, the rifle and ammunition, our medicine kit and the few instruments we had brought with us down the shaft, even our clothing. They turned us loose stark naked. Ray's face and neck went beet-red when he saw Mildred standing by him.
The rasping sound came from one of them again.
"It says you may stay with me," Mildred said. "They will not harm you unless you try again to get away. If you do, you die--as father did. They will keep what they took from you."
* * * * *
Several of the creatures went scraping off, carrying the articles they had taken from us either in their claws or in the metal cases they wore. Several waited, staring at us with the stalked compound eyes, and waving the green antennae as if they were organs of some special sense.
Two of the creatures waited at the foot of the metal ladder, holding the long slender white tubes of the heat-ray in their claws.
"They say we can go now," Mildred said.
She led the way toward the edge of the brilliant jungle. She seemed to be without false modesty, for I saw her glancing with evident admiration at Ray's lithe and powerful white-skinned figure. We followed her into the giant mushrooms, glad to escape the overpowering stench of the crabs.
In a few minutes we arrived again at the strange building of the three blue cylinders. Mildred, noticing our discomfort, produced for each of us a piece of white silken fabric with which we draped ourselves.
She had noticed my difficulty in walking on bare feet. She had me bathe them, then dressed them with a soothing yellow oil, and bandaged them skilfully.
"Anyhow," she said later, "it is good to have both of you here with me. I am sorry indeed for you that you may never see your country again. But it is good fortune for me. I was so lonely."
"These damned crabs don't know me!" Ray Summers muttered. "They think I'll play around like a pet kitten, for the rest of my life! They'll get their eyes opened. We'll spend the winter on Palm Beach yet!"
"It seems to me that we're rather outnumbered." I said. "And it's rather more pleasant in here than outside."
"I'm going to get that rifle," Ray declared, "and give these big crabs a little respect for humanity!"
"Let's rest up a while first, anyhow," I urged.
* * * * *
Presently Mildred noticed how tired we were. She went into the third of the connected cylinders of blue crystal, was busy a few minutes and called us to the couches she had prepared there.
"You may sleep," she told us. "The Things never come here. And they said they would not harm you, if you did not try to go out."
We lay down on the silken beds. In a few minutes I was sleep. I awoke to feel a curious unease, a sense of impending catastrophe. Ray was bending over me, his face drawn with anxiety.
"Something's happened!" he whispered. "She's gone!"
I sat up, staring into the liquid blue vastness of the tall cylinder above us.
"Listen! What's that?"
A deep bell-note sounded out, brazen, clanging. Sonorous, throbbing, mighty, it rang through the cylindered rooms. Slowly it died; faded to silence with a last ringing pulse. Tense minutes of silence passed. Again it boomed out, throbbed, and died. After more long minutes there was yet a third.
"Outside, somewhere!"
Ray started; ran to the arched door. We looked out upon the dense forest of gold and crimson mushrooms that grew below the black cavern roof. Before us, across a few hundred yards of bare rocky beach, was the edge of the crystal lake with the city of blue cylinders upon its floor.
"God! What's that?" Ray gripped my arm crushingly.
A thin wailing scream came across the beach from the black lake. A piteous sound it was, plaintive, pleading. Higher and higher it rose, until it was a piercing silver note. Clear and sweet it was, but inexpressibly lonely, sorrowful, mournful. It sank slowly, died away. Again it rose and fell, and again.
"It's Mildred!" I gasped. "Didn't she say something about singing to the crabs?"
"Yes! I think she did. Well, if that's singing, it's wonderful! Had me feeling like I'd never see another human. But listen--"
* * * * *
Liquid, trilling notes were rising, pealing out in a queer, swift rhythm. It was happy, joyous, carefree. The rippling golden tones made me think of the caroling of birds on a spring morning. Swiftly it rose and fell, pure and clear as the tinkle of a mountain brook.
Mildred sang not words but notes of pure music.
The gay song died.
And the strong clear voice rose again with the force and challenge of bugle notes, with a swift marching time beating through it. It throbbed to a rhythm strange to me. It set my feet tingling to move; it set my heart to pulsing faster. It was a challenge to action, to battle.
Unconsciously obeying the suggestion of the song, Ray whispered, "Let's get over and see what's going on."
We leaped through the door and ran across four hundred yards of rocky beach to the edge of the lake. We stepped on a granite bluff a few yards above the water, to gaze upon as strange a sight as men ever saw.
The black water lay before us, a transparent crystal sheet. On its rocky bottom we could see the innumerable clusters of upright azure cylinders that were the city of the crabs. The blue cylinders seemed to bend and waver in the water.
A hundred yards away from us, over the dark water, was Mildred. She stood on a slender azure cylinder that came just to the surface. Tall, slender, superbly graceful, with only the scant bodice of green silken stuff about her, she looked like the statue of a goddess in white marble. Her head was thrown up, golden-brown hair fell behind her shoulders, and the pure notes of her song rang over the water.
Beyond her, all about her, were thousands upon thousands of the giant crabs, swimming at the surface of the water. Their green antenna rose above the water, a curious forest of luminous tentacles, flexing, wavering. Green coils moved and swung in time to the strange rhythm of her song.
The last note died. Her white arms fell in a gesture of finality. The thousands of twisting green antennae vanished below the water, and the giant red crabs swam swiftly back to the tall blue cylinders of their submerged city.
* * * * *
The white goddess turned and saw us.
Her voice rang out in a golden shout of welcome. With a clean dive she slipped into the water and came swimming swiftly toward us. Her slim white body glided through the crystal water as smoothly as a fish. Reaching the shore she sprang to her feet and ran to meet Ray.
"The Things come together when the giant bell rings, to listen to my song," she said. "They like my singing, as they liked mother's. But for that, they would not let us live. That is the reason they would not let us go."
"I like your singing, too," Ray informed her. "Though at first you made me cry. It was so lonely."
"The song was lonely because I have been lonely. Did you hear the glad song I sang because you have come?"
"Sure! Great stuff! Made me feel like a kid at Christmas!"
"Come," she said. "We will eat."
Like a child, she took Ray's hand again, smiling naively up at him as she led the way toward the three sapphire cylinders.
Back in the blue-vaulted dining room, Ray made Mildred sit with me at the little metal table while he served the little brown cakes and the dark-red soup and the fragrant amber drink. Mildred got up and brought a great metal bowl filled with tiny purple fruits that had a delicious, piquant tang.
Ray was deeply thoughtful as he ate. Suddenly he sat back and cried out:
"I've got it!"
"Got what?" I demanded.
"I want that rifle! Mildred can find out where it is. Then, when she sings, the crabs will all come. I'll get the gun, while she is singing, and hide it. Then when it comes time to get out, she will sing while you and I are getting our packs up the cliff. I can cover them with the rifle while she gets up to us."
"Looks good enough," I agreed, "provided they all come to hear the singing."
* * * * *
He explained the plan at greater length to the girl. She assured him that the crabs all come when the bell-notes sound. She thought that she could make them return her furs, and find out where they had put the gun.
My feet were much better than they had been, and Mildred dressed them again with the yellow oil. Ray examined them, said that I should be able to walk as well as ever in a few days.
Considerable time went by. Since the crabs had taken our watches, we had no very accurate way of counting days; but I think we slept about a dozen times. Ray and Mildred spent a good deal of time together, and seemed not altogether to hate each other. By the end of the time my feet were quite well; I did not even lose a toe.
We went over our plans for escape in great detail. The crabs had confiscated our clothing. Mildred managed to secure the return of her furs, and, incidentally, while she was about it, learned where the rifle was.
Fortunately, perhaps realizing that it would be ruined by water, the crabs had not taken it to their submerged city. Being amphibious, they lived above water as easily as below, and much of their industrial equipment was above the surface. The great pumps which lifted the white phosphorescent liquid from the canals back to the cone above the ground were located beyond the great lake. I did not see the place, but Ray tells me that they had great engines and a wealth of strange and complex machinery there. It was at these pumps that they had left our rifle and instruments, as Mildred found when she was recovering her furs.
They had taken our food, and we prepared as much more as we could carry, arranged sacks for it, and made quilted garments for ourselves.
* * * * *
Then the three brazen notes clanged out, and Mildred ran across the beach and swam out to the blue cylinder to sing. Ray slipped hurriedly away, while the green forest of antennae was still growing up from the water about the girl.
I waited above the beach, enchanted by the haunting, wordless melody of the gongs. It seemed that only a few minutes had passed, though it may have been an hour or more, when Ray was by my side again. He flourished the rifle.
"I've got it! In good shape, too. Hasn't even been fired, though it looks like they have opened a box of cartridges, and cut open one or two. Maybe they didn't understand the outfit--or it may be such a primitive weapon that they aren't interested in it."
We hurried up to the building of blue cylinders and carefully hid the gun and ammunition, as well as a sun compass, a pair of prism binoculars, and a few other articles Ray had recovered.
In a few minutes Mildred, having seen Ray's return, finished her song and ran up to join us. We arranged our packs, and waited the next call of the throbbing brazen gong to make the attempt for freedom.
We slept twice again before the clang of the great gong. Ray and Mildred were always together; I could not see that they were at all impatient.
The bell note came, the awful brazen vibration of it ringing on the black cavern roof. It came when we were eating, in the liquid turquoise radiance of the lofty cylinder. We sprang out. Ray gave his last directions to Mildred.
"Give us time to get to the top of the cliff by the shining fall. Then swim ashore and run. They may not notice. And if they do, we give 'em a taste of lead!"
I was not very much surprised when he took the girl in his arms and put a burning kiss on her red lips. She gasped, but her struggles subsided very quickly; she clung to him as he freed her.
She paused a moment in the door, before she ran down across the beach. A radiant light of joy was burning in her great blue eyes, even though tears were glistening there.
* * * * *
Ray and I waited, to give time for the giant crabs that guarded the ladder to get away. In about ten more minutes the second brazen gong sounded, and presently the third. We gathered up the heavy packs of food. Ray took the rifle and I the binoculars, and we slipped out into the brilliant mushroom forest.
I stepped confidently out of the jungle into the clearing below the splendid opalescent fall of fire--and threw myself backward in trembling panic. A flaming crimson ray cut hissing into the towering mushrooms above my head.
Mildred's confidence that the crabs would all gather at the ringing of the gong had been mistaken. The two guards had been waiting at the foot of the ladder, their flaming heat-rays ready for use.
As I dived back into the jungle, I heard two quick reports of the rifle. I scrambled awkwardly to my feet, beneath the heavy pack. Ray stood alert beside me, the smoking rifle in his hand. The giant crabs had collapsed by the foot of the ladder, in grotesque and hideous metal-bound heaps of red shell and twisted limb. Blood was oozing from a ragged hole in the head of each.
"Glad they were here," Ray muttered. "I wanted to try the gun out on 'em. They're soft enough beneath the shell; the bullet tears 'em up inside. Let's get a move on!"
He sprang past the revolting carcasses. I followed, holding my nose against their nauseating, charnel-house odor. We scrambled up the metal ladder.
As we climbed, I could hear the haunting melody of Mildred's wordless song coming faint across the distance. Once I glanced back for a moment, and glimpsed her tiny white figure above the black water, with the thousands of green antennae rising in a luminous forest about her.
We reached the top of the cliff, where the opalescent river plunged down in the flaming fall. Ray chose convenient boulders for shelter and quickly we flung ourselves flat. Ray replaced the fired cartridges in the rifle and leveled it across the rock before him. I unslung the binoculars and focussed them.
"Watch 'em close," Ray muttered. "And tell me when to shoot."
* * * * *
The black lake lay below us, with the weird city of sapphire cylinders on its floor. I got the glasses upon Mildred's white form. Soon she dived from the turquoise pedestal, swam swiftly ashore and vanished in the vivid fungous jungle. The wavering green antennae vanished below the water; I watched the crabs swimming away. Some of them climbed out of the water and lumbered off in various directions.
In fifteen minutes the slender white form of Mildred appeared at the foot of the ladder. She sprang over the dead crabs and scrambled nimbly up. Soon she was halfway up the face of the cliff, and there had been no sign of discovery. My hopes ran high.
I was sweeping the whole plain with the binoculars, while Ray peered through the telescopic sights of the rifle. Suddenly I saw a giant crab pause as he lumbered along the edge of the black lake. He rose upright; his shining green antennae wavered. Then I saw him reaching with a knobbed claw for a slender silver tube slung to his harness.
"Quick! The one by the lake! To the right of that canal!"
I pointed quickly. Ray swung his gun about, aimed. A broad red beam flashed from the tube the thing carried, and fell upon the cliff. The report of Ray's rifle rang thunderously in my ears. The red ray was snapped off abruptly, and the giant crab rolled over into the black water of the lake. Half a dozen of the huge crabs were in sight. They all took alarm, probably having seen the flash of the red ray. They raised grotesque heads, twisted stalked eyes and waved green antennae. Some of them began to raise the metal tubes of the heat-ray.
"Let's get all there are in sight!" Ray muttered.
He began firing regularly, with deliberate precision. A few times he had to take two shots, but ordinarily one was enough to bring down a giant crab in a writhing red mass. Three times a red ray flashed out, once at the girl clambering up the ladder, twice at our position above the precipice. But the intense color of the ray announced its source, and Ray stopped each before it could be focussed to do damage.
I looked over at Mildred and saw that she was still climbing bravely, a little over a hundred feet below.
* * * * *
Then the great red crabs began to climb out of the water, heat-ray tubes grasped in their claws. Ray fired as fast as he could load and aim. Still he shot with deliberate care, and almost every shot was effective.
Intense, ruby-red rays flashed up from the lake shore. Twice, one of them beat scorchingly upon us for a moment. Once a rock beside us was fused and cracked with the heat. But Ray fired rapidly, and the rays winked out as fast as they were born.
He was powder-stained, black and grimy. The heat-ray had singed his clothing. He was dripping perspiration. The gun was so hot that he could hardly handle it. But still the angry bark of the rifle rang out, almost with a deliberate rhythm. Ray was a fine shot in his youth on his father's Arizona ranch, but his best shooting, I think, was done from above that cascade of liquid fire, at the hordes of monster scarlet crabs.
Mildred scrambled over the edge, unharmed. Her breast was heaving, but her face was bright with joy.
"You are wonderful!" she gasped to Ray.
We seized the packs and beat a hurried retreat. A crimson forest of the heat-rays flashed up behind us, and flamed upon the black walls and roof of the cavern until glistening lava became incandescent, cracked and fused.
We were below the line of the rays. Quickly we made the bend in the cavern and followed at a halting run up the path beside the shimmering river of opalescent light. Before us the torrent of fire fell in a magnificent flaming arc from the roof.
We rounded the pool of lambent milk of flame, passed the roaring torrent of coruscating liquid radiance and reached the ladder in the square, metal shaft. "If we can get to the top before they can get up here, we're safe," Ray said. "If we don't, this shaft will be a chimney of fire."
In the haste of desperation, we attacked the thousand-foot climb. I went first, Mildred below me, and Ray, with the rifle, in the rear. Our heavy packs were a terrible impediment, but we dared not attempt to go on without them. The metal rungs were four feet apart; it was no easy task to scramble from one to the next, again and again, for hundreds of times.
* * * * *
It must have taken us an hour to make it. We should have been caught long before we reached the top, but the giant crabs were slow in their lumbering movements. Despite their evident intelligence, they seemed to lack anything like our railways and automobiles.
The cold gray light of the polar sky came about us; a dull, purple-blue square grew larger above. I clambered over the last rung, flung myself across the top of the metal shaft. Looking down at the tiny fleck of white light so far below, I saw a bit of red move in it.
"A crab!" I shouted. "Hurry!"
Mildred was just below me. I took her pack and helped her over the edge.
Red flame flared up the shaft.
We reached over, seized Ray's arms and fairly jerked him out of the ruby ray.
The bitterly cold wind struck our hot, perspiring bodies as we scrambled down the rungs outside the square metal shaft. Mildred shivered in her thin attire.
"Out of the frying pan into the ice box!" Ray jested grimly as we dropped, to the frozen plain.
Quickly we tore open our packs. Ray and I snatched out clothing and wrapped up the trembling girl. In a few minutes we had her snugly dressed in the fur garments that had been Major Meriden's. Then we got into the quilted garments we had made for ourselves.
The intensely red heat-beam still flared up the shaft. Ray looked at it in satisfaction.
"They'll have it so hot they can't get up it for some time yet," he remarked hopefully.
We shouldered our packs and set out over the wilderness of snow, turning our backs upon the metal-bound lake of fire, with the tall cone of iridescent flame rising in its center.
The deep, purple-blue sky was clear, and, for a rarity, there was not much wind. I doubt that the temperature was twenty below. But it was a violent change from the warm cavern. Mildred was blue and shivering.
* * * * *
In two hours the metal rim below the great white cone had vanished behind the black ice-crags. We passed near the wreck of Major Meriden's plane and reached our last camp, where we had left the tent sledge, primus stove, and most of our instruments. The tent was still stretched, though banked with snow. We got Mildred inside, chafed her hands, and soon had her comfortable.
Then Ray went out and soon returned with a sealed tin of oil from the wrecked plane, with which he lit the primus stove. Soon the tent was warm. We melted snow and cooked thick red soup. After the girl had made a meal of the scalding soup, with the little golden cakes, she professed to be feeling as well as ever.
"We can fix our plane!" Ray said. "There's a perfectly good prop on Meriden's plane!"
We went back to the wreck, found the tools, and removed an undamaged propeller. This we packed on the sledge, with a good supply of fuel for the stove.
"I'm sure we're safe now, so far as the crab-things go," he said. "I don't fancy they'd get around very well in the snow."
In an hour we broke camp, and made ten miles of the distance back to the plane before we stopped. We were anxious about Mildred, but she seemed to stand the journey admirably; she is a marvelous physical specimen. She seemed running over with gay vivacity of spirit; she asked innumerable questions of the world which she had known only at second-hand from her mother's words.
* * * * *
The weather smiled on us during the march back to the plane as much as it had frowned on the terrible journey to the cone. We had an abundance of food and fuel, and we made it in eight easy stages. Once there was a light fall of snow, but the air was unusually warm and calm for the season.
We found the plane safe. It was the work of but a short time to remove the broken propeller and replace it with the one we had brought from the wrecked ship. We warmed and started the engine, broke the skids loose from the ice, turned the plane around, and took off safely from the tiny scrap of smooth ice.
Mildred seemed amazed and immensely delighted at the sensations of her first trip aloft.
A few hours later we were landing beside the Albatross, in the leaden blue sea beyond the ice barrier. Bluff Captain Harper greeted us in amazed delight as we climbed to the deck.
"You're just in time!" he said. "The relief expedition we landed came back a week ago. We had no idea you could still be alive, with only a week's provisions. We were sailing to-morrow. But tell us! What happened? Your passenger--"
"We just stopped to pick up my fiancee," Ray grinned. "Captain, may I present Miss Mildred Meriden? We'll be wanting you to marry us right away."
UNDER ARCTIC ICE
By H.G. Winter
CHAPTER I
An Empty Room
The house where the long trail started was one of gray walls, gray rooms and gray corridors, with carpets that muffled the feet which at intervals passed along them. It was a house of silence, brooding within the high fence that shut it and the grounds from a landscape torpid under the hot sun of summer, and across which occasionally drifted the lonely, mournful whistle of a train on a nearby railroad. Inside the house there was always a hush, a heavy quiet--restful to the brain.
But now a voice was raised, young, angry, impatient, in one of the gray-walled rooms.
"Yes, I rang for you. I want my bags packed. I'm leaving this minute!"
The face of the man who had entered showed surprise.
"Leaving, Mr. Torrance? Why?"
"Read this!"
As if, knowing and therefore dreading what he would see, the attendant took the newspaper held outstretched to him and followed the pointing finger to a featured column. He scanned it:
Deadline Passed for Missing Submarine
Point Barrow, Aug. 17 (AP): Planes sent out to search for the missing polar submarine Peary have returned without clue to the mystery of is disappearance. The close search that has been conducted through the last two weeks, involving great risks to the pilots, has been fruitless, and authorities now hold out small hope for Captain Sallorsen, his crew and the several scientists who accompanied the daring expedition.
If the Peary, as is generally thought, is trapped beneath the ice floes or embedded in the deep silt of the polar sea-floor, her margin of safety has passed the deadline, it was pointed out to-day by her designers. Through special rectifiers aboard, her store of air can be kept capable of sustaining life for a theoretical period of thirty-one days. And exactly thirty-one days have now elapsed since last the Peary's radio was heard from a position 72° 47' N, 162° 22' W, some twelve hundred miles from the North Pole itself.
In official circles, hope was practically abandoned for the missing submarine, though attempts will continue to be made to locate her....
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance," said the attendant nervously. "This paper should--"
"Should never have reached me, eh? Through some slip of the people who censor my reading matter here, I read what I wasn't supposed to--that's what you mean?"
"It was thought better, Mr. Torrance, by the doctors, and--"
"Good God! Thought better! Through their sagacity, these doctors have probably condemned the men on this submarine to death! I haven't heard a word about the expedition; didn't even know the Peary was up there, much less missing!"
"Well, Mr. Torrance," the attendant stammered, more and more unsettled, "the doctors thought that--that any news about it would--well, upset you."
The young man laughed bitterly;
"Bring on my old 'trouble,' I suppose. The doctors have been considerate, but I won't concern them any more. I'm through. I'm leaving for the north--right now. There's a bare chance I might still be in time."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Torrance, but you can't."
"Can't?"
The attendant had retreated to the door. His eyes were nervous, his face pale.
"It's orders, Mr. Torrance. You've been under observation treatment, and the doctors left strict orders that you must stay."
The young man throbbed with dangerous anger. His hands clenched and unclenched. He burst out, in a last attempt at reason:
"But don't you see, I've got to get to the Peary! It's the last hope for those men! The position she was last heard from is right where I--"
"You can't leave, Mr. Torrance! I'm sorry, but I'll have to call a guard!"
For a minute their eyes held. With an effort, the young man said more calmly:
"I see. I see. I'm a prisoner. All right, leave me."
The attendant was more than willing. The young man heard the door's lock click. And then he lowered his head and pressed his hands hard into his face.
But a second later he was looking up again, at the single wide window which gave out on the lonely landscape over which sometimes came drifting the distant cry of a train's whistle.
* * * * *
Two months before, Kenneth Torrance had returned to the whaling submarine Narwhal, of which he was first torpooner, with a confused story of men who were half-seals that lived in mounds under the Arctic ice,[1] who had captured him and--he found--had also captured the second torpooner, Chanley Beddoes. In breaking free from their mound-prison, Beddoes had killed one of the sealmen and had been himself slain minutes later by a killer whale, one of the fierce scavengers of the sea which the sealmen trapped for food even as the Narwhal sought them for oil. Ken Torrance alone came back.
Over their doubts, he had stuck to his story. Later, he had repeated it to officials of the Alaska Whaling Company, who worked the submarine and several surface ships. They in return had sent him to a private sanitarium in the State of Washington for a rest which they hoped would "iron out the kink" in his brain.
Here Ken had been for six weeks, while the exploring submarine Peary nosed her way northward toward the Pole. Here he had been, all unknowing, while the world hummed with reports of the Peary's disappearance in that far-off ever-shrouded sea of mystery.
She might, Ken knew, have struck a shaft of underwater ice, sending her to the bottom; some of her machinery might have cracked up, paralyzing her; the ice-fields under which she cruised might have shifted suddenly, crushing her ribs--of these perils the world knew as well as he. But the submarine's crew was prepared for them; the Peary was equipped with a circular saw for cutting up through the ice from beneath, and she carried sea-suits which would allow her men, if she were wrecked on the bottom, to leave her and get up on the ice and wait for the first searching plane.
Why, then, had not the planes which scoured the region found the survivors?
That was the mystery--but not to Ken Torrance. There was another peril, of which he alone knew. Not far from where the Peary's last radio report had come, a group of hollowed-out mounds lay on the sea-floor, swarming with brown-skinned, quick-swimming creatures. Sealmen, they were--men who, like the seals, had gone back to the sea. Months ago, Second Torpooner Chanley Beddoes had killed one of them. They were intelligent; they could remember; they were capable of hate and fear; they would be desirous of leveling the debt!
There, Ken felt sure, lay the reason for the Peary's baffling silence, for the non-appearance of her men.
There might still be time. No one of course would listen to him and believe, so he would have to go in search of the Peary and her crew himself.
Standing by the window, Kenneth Torrance quickly planned the several steps which would take him to the Arctic and its silent ice-coated sea.
And when, some two hours later, after a short warning rap on the door, the individual who served as Mr. Torrance's attendant entered his room, he was confronted, not by the gentleman whose dinner he carried, but by an empty room, a stripped bed, an open window, and a rope of sheets dangling from it toward the ground two stories beneath.
That was at seven o'clock in the evening.
CHAPTER II
The Crash
At a few minutes before eight o'clock, Air Mail Pilot Steve Chapman was enjoying a quiet cigarette while waiting for the mechanics to warm up the five hundred horses of his mail plane satisfactorily. Halfway through, he heard, from behind, a quick patter of feet, and, turning, he observed a figure clad in flannel trousers and sweater. The cigarette dropped right out of his mouth as he cried:
"Ken! Ken Torrance!"
"Thank God you're here!" said Kenneth Torrance. "I gambled on it. Steve, I've got to borrow your own personal plane."
"What?" gasped Steve Chapman. "What--what--?"
"Listen, Steve. I haven't been with the whaling company lately; been resting, down here--secluded. Didn't know that submarine, the Peary, was missing. I just learned. And I know damned well what's happened to it. I've got to get to it, quick is I can, and I've got to have a plane."
Steve Chapman said rather faintly:
"But--where was the Peary when they last heard from her?"
"Some twelve hundred miles from the Pole."
"And you want to get there in a plane? From here?"
"Must!"
"Boy, you stand about one chance in twenty!"
"Have to take it. Time's precious, Steve. I've got to stop in at the Alaska Whaling Company's outpost at Point Christensen, then right on up. I can't even begin unless I have a plane. You've got to help me on my one chance of bringing the Peary's men out alive! You'll probably never see the plane again, Steve, but--"
"To hell with the plane, if you come through with yourself and those men," said the pilot. "All right, kid, I don't get it all, but I'm playing with you. You're taking my own ship."
He led Ken to a hangar wherein stood a trim five-passenger amphibian; and very soon that amphibian was roaring out her deep-throated song of power on the line, itching for the air, and Steve Chapman was shouting a few last words up to the muffled figure in the enclosed control cockpit.
"Fuel'll last around forty hours," he finished. "You'll find two hundred per, easy, and twenty-five hours should take you clear to Point Christensen. I put gun and maps in the right pocket; food in that flap behind you. Go to it, Ken!"
Ken Torrance gripped the hand outstretched to his and held it tight. He could say nothing, could only nod--this was a real friend. He gave the ship the gun.
Her mighty Diesel bellowed, lashed the air down and under; the amphibian spun her retractable wheels over the straight hard ground until they lifted lightly and tilted upward in a slow climb for altitude. With fiery streams from the exhaust lashing her flanks, she faded into the darkness to the north.
"Well," murmured Steve Chapman, "I've got her instalments left, anyway!" And he grinned and turned to the mail.
* * * * *
That night passed slowly by; and the next day; and all through night and day the steady roar of beating cylinders hung in Kenneth Torrance's ears. At last came Point Christensen and a descent; sleep and then quick, decisive action; and again the amphibian rose, heavily loaded now, and droned on toward the ice and the cold bleak skies of the far north. On, ever on, until Point Barrow, Alaska's northernmost spur, was left behind to the east, and the world was one of drifting ice on gray water. Muscles cramped, mind dulled by the everlasting roar, head aching and weary, Ken held the amphibian to her steady course, until a sudden wind shook her momentarily from it.
A rising wind. The skies were ugly. And then he remembered that the men at Point Christensen had warned him of a storm that was brewing. They'd told him that he was heading into disaster; and their surprised, rather fearful faces appeared before him again, as he had seen them just before taking off, after he had told them where he was going.
Of course they'd thought him crazy. He had brought the amphibian down in the little harbor off the whaling company's base, gone ashore and greeted his old friends. There was only a handful of men stationed there; the Narwhal was being overhauled in a shipyard at San Francisco, and it wasn't the season for surface whalers. They knew that he, Ken, had been put in a sanitarium; all of them had heard his wild story about sealmen. But he concocted a plausible yarn to account for his arrival, and they had fed him and given him a berth in the bunkhouse for the night.
For the night! Ken Torrance grinned as he recalled the scene. In the middle of the night he had risen, quickly awakened four of the sleeping men, and with his gun forced them to take a torpoon from the outpost's storehouse and put it inside the amphibian's passenger compartment.
It was robbery, and of course they'd thought him insane, but they didn't dare cross him. He had told them cheerfully he was going after the Peary, and that if they wanted the torpoon back they were to direct the searching planes to keep their eyes on the place where the submarine was last heard from....
* * * * *
Ken came back to the present abruptly as the plane lurched. The wind was getting nasty. At least he did not have much farther to go; an hour's flying time would take him to his goal, where he must descend into the water to continue his search. His search! Had it been, he wondered, a useless one from the start? Had the submarine's crew been killed before he'd even read of her disappearance? If the sealmen got them, would they destroy them immediately?
"I doubt it," Ken muttered to himself. "They'd be kept prisoners in one of those mounds, like I was. That is, if they haven't killed any of the creatures. It hangs on that!"
An hour's time, he had reckoned; but it was more than an hour. For soon the world was blotted out by a howling dervish of wind and driven snow that time and time again snatched the amphibian from Ken's control and hurled it high, or threw it down like a toy toward the inferno of sea and ice he knew lay beneath. He fought for altitude, for direction, pitched from side to side, tumbled forward and back, gaining a few hundred feet only to feel them plucked breathtakingly out from under him as the screaming wind played with him.
Now and again he snatched a glance at the torpoon behind. The gleaming, twelve-foot, cigar-shaped craft, with its directional rudders, propeller, vision-plate and nitro-shell gun lay safely secured in the passenger compartment, a familiar and reassuring sight to Ken, who, as first torpooner of the Narwhal, had worked one for years in the chase for killer whales. Soon, it seemed, he would have to depend on it for his life.
For all the Diesel's power, it was not enough to cope with the dead weight of ice which was forming over the plane's wings and fuselage. He could not keep the altimeter up. However he fought, Ken saw that finger drop down, down--up a trifle, quivering as the racked plane quivered--and then down and down some more.
He saw that the plane was doomed. He would have to abandon it--in the torpoon--if he could.
He was some thirty miles from his objective. The sea beneath would be half hidden under ragged, drifting floes. In fair weather he could have chosen a landing space of clear water, but now he could not choose. The altitude dial said that the water was three hundred feet beneath, and rapidly rising nearer.
A margin of seconds in which to prepare! Ken locked the controls and scrambled back into the passenger compartment. Steadying himself on the bucking floor, he opened the torpoon's entrance port and slid in; quickly he locked the port and strapped the inner body harness around him; and then he waited.
Now it was all chance. If the plane crashed into clear water, he was safe; but if she hit ice.... He put that thought from him.
The locked controls held the amphibian for perhaps thirty seconds. Then with a scream the storm-giant took her. A mad up-current of wind hurled her high, whirled her dizzily, toyed with her--and then she spun and dove. Down, down, down; down with a speed so wild Ken grew faint; down through the core of a maelstrom of snow till she crashed.
Kenneth Torrance knew a sudden shaking impact; for an instant there was uncertainty; and then came all-pervading quiet....
CHAPTER III.
The Fate of the Peary
Quiet, and utter, liquid darkness.
Liquid! Around him, Ken heard a gurgling, at first loud and close, then subsiding to a low whispering of currents. The amphibian had hit water.
Gone in an instant was the shriek and fury of the storm and in its place the calm, slow-heaving silence of underwater. The plane was shattered in a dozen places, but the torpoon had easily stood it.
Ken turned to action. He switched on the torpoon's dashboard lights and twin bow-beams, and saw that the shell was wedged in the fuselage. The plane was apparently entirely under the surface, and her interior filled with water.
Holding the propeller in neutral, he revved up the powerful electric motor. Then he bit the propeller in, slowly. The torpoon nudged back for inches. Then, throwing the gear into forward, Ken gave her full speed. The torpoon leaped ahead, crunched through the weakened corner ahead and was free.
It was a world of drab tones that she came into. Down below was impenetrable blackness, shading softly overhead into blue-gray which was mottled by lighter areas from breaks in the floes above. All was calm. There was no sign of life save for an occasional vague shadow that, melting swiftly away, might have been a fish or seaweed. Placid always, would be this shrouded sea of mystery, no matter what furious tempest raged above over the flat leagues of ice and water.
But the seeming peacefulness was but a mask for danger. Kenneth Torrance's face was set in sober lines as he sped the slim torpoon northward, her bow lights shafting long white fingers before her. For now there was only one path--and that lay ahead. He could not turn back. Storm and water had destroyed the plane that could take him back to land. He could not possibly reach any outpost of civilization in the torpoon, for her cruising radius was only twenty hours. He had planned to land the amphibian on the ice above the spot where the Peary had disappeared, then find a break in the ice and slide down below in the torpoon on his quest--to return to the plane if it proved fruitless. But now there was no retreat. It was succeed, or die.
And with that realization a more dreadful thought flashed into his mind. All those men, of the whaling company and the sanitarium, thought him a little crazy. And, since lunatics are always convinced of the reality of their visions, what if the sealmen--his adventure amidst them--had been but a dream, a nightmare, an hallucination? What if he were in truth crazy? The fear grew rapidly. What if he were? God! He, hunting for the Peary, when all those planes and men had failed! He, expecting to achieve what those searchers, with far greater resources, had not been able to! Did not that give evidence that his mind was twisted? Creatures, half-seal, half-men, living under the ice--it certainly seemed a lunatic's obsession.
Then something within him rose and fought back.
"No!" he cried aloud. "I'll go bugs if I think like that! Those sealmen were real--and I know where they are. I'm going on!"
And, an hour later, the dashboard's shaded dials told him he was on the exact spot where the Peary had last reported....
* * * * *
Here was the real Arctic, the real polar sea. No sun, no breath of the world above could reach it through its eternal mask of solid ice. As one of the few unfamiliar aspects of the earth, it was as far removed from the imagination of man as if it were part of a far planet hung spinning millions of miles out in space. Men could reach it in shells of metal, but it was not meant for him, and was always hostile. A dozen times a daring one could cross safely its cold lonely reaches, but the thirteenth time it would snare and destroy him for the unwanted trespasser he was.
It was here that the Peary had stepped off into mystery. At this point her hull had throbbed with air, movement, life; at this point all had been well. And then, minutes or hours later, close to here, the sea devil had sprung.
What had happened? What had trapped her? What, even more baffling, had kept her men with their manifold safety devices from even reaching and climbing up on the ice above to signal the searching planes?
Ken Torrance, oppressively alone in the hovering torpoon, gazed through its vision-plate of fused quartz around him. Gray sea, filtering to black beneath; distant eerie shadows, probably meaning nothing, but possibly all important; ceiling of thick ice above, rough and in places broken by a sharp down-thrusting spur--these were his surroundings. These were what he must hunt through, until he came upon the crumpled remnant of a submarine, or the murky, rounded hillocks which gave habitation to the creatures he suspected of capturing that submarine's crew.
* * * * *
He began the search systematically. He angled the torpoon down to a position halfway between sea-floor and ice-ceiling, then swung her in an ever-widening circle. Soon his orbit had a diameter of a half-mile; then a mile; then two.
The torpoon slipped through the water at full speed, her light-beams like restless antennae, now stabbing to the right to dissolve a formless shadow, now to the left to throw into blinding white relief a school of half-transparent fish which scurried with frantic wrigglings of tails from the glare, now slanting up to bathe the cold glassy face of an inverted ice-hill, now down to dig two white holes in the deeper gloom.
Ken continued this routine for hours. Steadily and low the electric motor droned in the ears of the watchful pilot, and the stubby propeller's blades flashed round in a blur of speed between the slightly slanted rudders. Somewhere, miles away, a splintered amphibian plane was slipping down to her last landing, and above, perhaps, the white hell of storm which had brought her low still bowled over the trackless wastes; but here were only shadows and shifting gloom, straining the alert eyes to soreness and tensing the watcher's brain with alarms that, one after another, were only false.
Until at last he found her.
Immediately he shut off all his lights. He no longer needed them. Far in the distance, and below, wavered a faint yellow glow. It was no fish; it could mean only one thing--the lights of a submarine.
And lights meant life! There would be none burning in a deserted submarine. His heart beat fast and his tight, sober lips widened in a quick grin. He had found the Peary! And found her with some life still aboard her! He was in time!
So Ken rejoiced while he slid the torpoon down to a level just a few feet above the silty sea bottom, reducing her to quarter-speed. There was an urge inside him to switch on his bow-beams, reach them out toward the submarine's hull to tell all within that help was at last at hand; he wanted to send the torpoon ahead at full speed. But caution restrained him to a more deliberate course. He was in the realm of the sealmen, and he did not wish to attract the attention of any. So he advanced like a furtive shadow slinking along the dark sea-bottom, deep in the covering gloom.
Nearer and nearer, while the distant blur of yellow light grew. Nearer and nearer to the long-trapped men, while the consciousness that he had succeeded intoxicated him. He alone had found them! Sealmen or no sealmen, he had found the Peary! And found her with lights lit and life inside! Nearer and nearer....
And then suddenly Ken halted the torpoon and stared with wide, alarmed eyes. For the submarine was now plainly visible in detail--and he saw her real plight and with it knew the answer to the mystery of her long silence and the non-appearance of her men on the ice field above.
* * * * *
The Peary was a spectacle of fantastic beauty. It was as if a huge, rounded piece of amber, mellow, golden, lay in the murk of the sea-floor. Not steel, hard and grim, but of transparent, shimmering stuff she was built, all coated a soft yellow by her lights, clearly visible inside. Ken had known something of her radical construction; knew that a substance called quarsteel, similar to glass and yet fully as tough as steel, had been used for her hull, making her a perfect vehicle for undersea exploration. Her bow was capped with steel, and her stern, propellers, diving rudders; her port-locks, for the releasing of torpoons, were also of steel, as were the struts that braced her throughout--but the rest was quarsteel, glowing and golden as the heart of amber.
Beautiful with a wild yet scientific beauty was the Peary, but she was not free. She was trapped. She was fastened to the mud of the gloomy sea-floor.
Ropes held her down; and Ken Torrance knew those ropes of old. They were tough and strong, woven of many strands of seaweed, and twenty or thirty of them striped the Peary's two hundred feet of hull. Unevenly spaced, stretched clear over the ship from one side to the other, they were caught around her up-jutting conning tower, fastened through her rudders, and holding tight in a score of places. They held the submarine down despite all the buoyancy of her emptied tanks and the power of her twin propellers.
And the sealmen swam around her.
* * * * *
Restless dark shadows against the golden hull, they wavered and darted and poised, totally unafraid. Another in Kenneth Torrance's place would have put them down as some strange school of large seals, inordinately curious but nothing more; but the torpooner knew them as men--men remodeled into the shape of seals; men who, ages ago, had forsaken the land for the old home of all life, the sea; who, through the years, had gradually changed in appearance as their flesh had become coated with layers of cold-resisting blubber; whose movements had become adapted to the water; whose legs and arms had evolved into flippers; but whose heads still harbored the now faint spark of intelligence that marked them definitely as men.
Emotions similar to man's they had, though dulled; friendliness, curiosity, anger, hate, and--Ken knew and feared--even a capacity for vengeance. Vengeance! An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth--the old law peculiar to man! Chanley Beddoes had slain one of them; if only the Peary's crew had not killed more! If only that, there might be hope!
First he must get inside the submarine. Warily, like a stalking cat, Ken Torrance inched the torpoon toward the great shining ship. At least he was in time. Within her he could see figures, most of them stretched out on the decks of her different compartments, but one of whom occasionally moved--slowly. He understood that. For weeks now the Peary had lain captive, and her air had passed beyond the aid of rectifiers. Tortured, those survivors inside were, constantly struggling for life, with vitality ever sinking lower. Some might already be dead. But at least he could try to save the rest.
He approached her from one side of the rear, for in the rear compartment were her two torpoon port-locks. The one on his side was empty, its outer door open. The torpoon it had held had been sent out, probably for help, and had not returned. It provided a means of entrance for him.
At perhaps a hundred feet from the port-lock, Ken halted again. His slim craft was almost indistinguishable in the murk: he felt reasonably safe from discovery. For minutes he watched the swimming sealmen, waiting for the best chance to dart in.
* * * * *
It was then, while studying the full length of the submarine more closely, that he saw that one compartment of her four was filled with water. Her steel-caped bow had been stove in. That, he conjectured, had been the original accident which had brought her down. It was not a fatal accident in itself, for there were three other compartments, all separated by watertight bulkheads, and the flooded one could be repaired by men in sea-suits--but then the sealmen had come and roped her down where she lay. Some of the creatures, he saw, were actually at that time inside the bow compartment, swimming around curiously amidst the clustered pipes, wheels and levers. It was a weird sight, and one that held his eyes fascinated.
But suddenly, through his absorption, danger prickled the short hairs of his neck. A lithe, sinuous shadow close ahead was wavering, and large, placid brown eyes were staring at him. A sealman! He was discovered! And instinctively, immediately, Ken Torrence brought the torpoon's accelerator down flat.
The shell jumped ahead with whirling propeller. The creature that had seen him doubled around and sped in retreat. In brief snatches, as the torpoon streaked across the hundred-foot gap to the empty port-lock, Ken glimpsed his discoverer gathering a group of its fellows, and saw brown-skinned bodies swarm after him with nooses of seaweed-rope--and then the great transparent side wall of the Peary was before him, and the port-locks dark opening. Ken threw his motor into reverse, slid the torpoon slightly to one side, and there was a jerk, a jar, and a sensation of something moving behind.
He turned to see the port-lock's outer door closing, activated by controls inside the submarine--and just in time to shut out the first of his pursuers. Then the port-lock's pumps were draining the water from the chamber, and the inner door clicked and opened.
Kenneth Torrance climbed stiffly from the torpoon to enter the interior of the long-lost and besieged exploring submarine Peary.
CHAPTER IV
"No Chance Left"
His entrance was an unpleasant experience. He had forgotten the condition of the air inside the submarine, and what its effect on him, coming straight from comparatively good and fresh air, would be, until he was seized by a sudden choking grip around his throat. He reeled and gasped, and was for a minute nauseated. Lights flashed around him, and teetering backward he leaned weakly, against some metal object until gradually his head cleared; but his lungs remained tortured, and his breathing a thing of quick, agonised gulps.
Then came sounds. Figures appeared before him.
"From where--" "Who are you?"
"What--what--what--" "How did you?"
The half-coherent questions were couched in whispers. The men around him were blear-eyed and haggard-faced, their skins dry and bluish, and not a one was clad in more than undershirt and trousers. Alive and breathing, they were--but breathing grotesquely, horribly. They made awful noises at it; they panted, in quick, shallow sucks. Some lay on the deck at his feet, outstretched without energy enough to attempt to rise.
Beautiful and slumber-like the submarine had appeared from outside, but inside that effect was lost. There were the usual appurtenances: a maze of pipes, wheels, machinery, all silent now, and cold; here were the two port-locks for torpoons; the emergency steering controls; the small staterooms of the Peary's officers. Looking forward, still striving for complete clear-headedness and normality, Ken could see the two intact forward compartments, silent and apparently lifeless, with dim lamps burning. They ended with the watertight bulkhead which stood between them and the flooded bow compartment.
Ken at last found words, but even his short query cost a sickening effort.
"Where's--the commander?" he asked.
* * * * *
A man turned from where he had been leaning against a nearby wheel control. He was stripped to the waist. His tall body was stooped, and the skin of his ruggedly cut face drawn and parchment-like. His face had once been dignified and authoritative, but now it was that of a man who nears death after a long, bitter fight for life. The smile which he gave to Ken was painful--a mockery.
"I am," he said faintly. "Sallorsen. Just wait, please. A minute. I worked port-lock. Breath's gone...."
He sucked shallowly for air and let his smile go. And standing there, beside him, gazing at the worn frame, Ken felt strength come back. He had just entered; this man and the others had been here for weeks!
"I'm Sallorsen," the captain went on at last. All his words were clipped off, to cost minimum effort. "Glad you got through. Afraid you're come to prison, though."
"No!" Ken said emphatically. He spoke to the captain, but what he said was also for all the others grouped around him. "No, Captain! I'm Kenneth Torrance. Once torpooner with Alaska Whaling Company. They thought me crazy--crazy--'cause I told about sealmen. Put me in sanitarium. I knew they had you--when--heard you were missing." He pointed at the brown-skinned creatures that clustered close around the submarine outside her transparent walls. "I got free and came. Just in time."
"In time? For what?"
Another voice gasped out the question. Ken turned to a broad-shouldered man with a ragged growth of beard that had been a trim Van Dyke; and before the torpooner could answer, Sallorsen said:
"Dr. Lawson. One of our scientists. In time for what?"
"To get you and the submarine free," said Ken.
"How?"
* * * * *
Ken paused before replying. He gazed around--out the side walls of glistening quarsteel into the sea gloom, into the thick of the smooth, lithe, brown-skinned shapes that now and again poised pressing against the submarine, peering in with their liquid seal's eyes. Dimly he could see the taut seaweed ropes stretching down from the top of the Peary to the sea-bottom. It looked hopeless, and to these men inside it was hopeless. He knew he must speak in confident, assured tones to drive away the uncaring lethargy holding them all, and he framed definite, concise words with which to do it.
"These creatures have caught you," he began, "and you think they want to kill you. But look at them. They seem to be seals. They're not. They're men! Not men like us--half-men--sealmen, rather--changed into present form by ages of living in the water. I know. I was captured by them once. They're not senseless brutes; they have a streak of man's intelligence. We must communicate with that intelligence. Must reason with them. I did once. I can do it again.
"They're not really hostile. They're naturally peaceful; friendly. But my friend--dead now--killed one of them. Naturally they now think all creatures like us enemies. That's why they trapped your sub.
"They think you're enemies; think you want to kill them. But I'll tell them--through pictures, as I did once before--that you mean them no harm. I'll tell them you're dying and must have air--just as they must. I'll tell them to release submarine and we'll go away and not disturb them again. Above all I must get across that you wish them no harm. They'll listen to what my pictures will say--and let us go--'cause at heart they're friendly!"
* * * * *
He paused--and with a ghastly, twisted smile, Captain Sallorsen whispered:
"The hell you say!"
His sardonic comment brought a sudden chill to Kenneth Torrance. He feared one thing that would render his whole value useless. He asked quickly:
"What have you done?"
"Those seals," Sallorsen's labored voice continued "--they've killed eight of us. Now they're killing all."
"But have you killed any of them?" Breathless, Ken waited for the answer be feared.
"Yes. Two."
The men were all staring at Ken, so he had to hide the awful dejection which clamped his heart. He only said:
"That's what I feared. It changes everything. No use trying to reason with them now." He fell silent. "Well," he said at last, trying to appear more cheerful, "tell me what happened. Maybe there's something you've overlooked."
"Yes," Sallorsen whispered. He started to come forward to the torpooner, but stumbled and would have fallen had not Ken caught him in time. He put one of the captain's arms around his shoulder, and one of his own around the man's waist.
"Thanks," Sallorsen said wryly. "Walk forward. Show you what happened."
* * * * *
There were men in the second compartment, and they still fought to live. From the narrow seamen's berths that lined the walls came the sound of breathing even more torturous than that of the men in the rear. In the single bulb's dim light Ken could see their shapes stretched motionlessly out, panting and panting. Occasionally hands reached up to claw at straining necks, as if to try and rid throats of strangling grasps. Two figures had won free from the long struggle. They lay silent and still, the outline of their dead bodies showing through the sheets pulled over them.
Slowly Sallorsen led Ken through this compartment and into the next, which was bare of men. Here were the ship's main controls--her helm, her central multitude of dials, levers and wheels, her televisiscreen and old-fashioned emergency periscope. A metal labyrinth it was, all long silent and inactive. Again the weird contrast struck Ken, for outside he could still see the scene of vigorous, curious life that the sealmen constituted. Close they came to the submarine's sheer walls of quarsteel, peering in stolidly, then flashing away with an effortless thrust of flippers, sometimes for air from some break in the surface ice.
Like men, the sealmen needed air to live, and got it fresh and clean from the world above. Inside, real men were gasping, fighting, hopelessly, yielding slowly to the invisible death that lay in the poisonous stuff they had to breathe....
Ken felt Sallorsen nudge him. They had come to the forward end of the control compartment, and could go no farther. Before them was the watertight door, in which was set a large pane of quarsteel. The captain wanted him to look through.
Ken did so, knowing what to expect; but even so he was surprised by the strangeness of the scene. In among the manifold devices of the front compartment, its wheels and pipes and levers, glided slowly the sleek, blubbery shapes of half a dozen sealmen. Back and forth they swam, inspecting everything curiously, unhurried and unafraid; and as Ken stared one of them came right up to the other side of the closed watertight door, pressed close to the pane and regarded him with large placid eyes.
Other sealmen entered through a jagged rip in the plates on the starboard side of the bow. At this Sallorsen began to speak again in the short, clipped sentences, punctuated by quick gasps for air.
* * * * *
"Crashed, bow-on," he said. "Underwater ice. Outer and inner plates crumpled like paper. Lost trim and hit bottom. Got this door closed, but lost four men in bow compartment. Drowned. No chance. Sparks among 'em, at his radio. That's why we couldn't radio for help." He paused, gasping shallowly.
"Could've got away if we'd left immediately. One flooded compartment not enough to hold this ship down. But I didn't know. I sent two men out in sea-suits--inspect damage. Those devils got them.
"The seal-things came in a swarm. God! Fast! We didn't realize. They had ropes, and in seconds they'd lashed us down to the sea-floor. Lashed us fast!" Again he paused and sucked for the poisoned air, and Ken Torrance did not try to hurry him, but stood silent, looking forward to the squashed bow, and out the sides to where he could see the taut black lines of the seaweed-ropes.
"The two men put up fight. Had crowbars. Useless--but they killed one of the devils. That did it. They were torn apart in front of us. Ripped. Mangled. By spears the things carry. Dead like that."
"Yes," murmured Ken, "that would do it...."
"I quick tried to get away," gasped Sallorsen. "Full-speed--back and forth. No good. Ropes held. Couldn't break. All our power couldn't! So then--then I acted foolishly. Damn foolish. But we were all a little crazy. A nightmare, you know. Couldn't believe our eyes--those seals outside, mocking us. So I called for volunteers. Four men. Put 'em in sea-suits, gave 'em shears and grappling prongs. They went out.
"They went out laughing--saying they'd soon have us free! Oh, God!" It seemed he could not go on, but he forced the words out deliberately. "Killed without a chance! Ripped apart like the others! No chance! Suicide!"
Ken felt the agony in the man, and was silent for a while before quietly asking:
"Did they kill any more of the sealmen?"
"One. Just one. That made two of them--six of us. What the hell are the rest of them waiting for?" Sallorsen cried. "They killed eight in all! To our two! That's enough for them, isn't it?"
"I'm afraid not," said Ken Torrance. "Well, what then?"
"Sat down and thought. Carefully. Hit on a plan. Took one of our two torpoons. Lashed on it steel plates, ground to sharp cutting edges. Spent days at it. Thought torpoon could go out and cut the ropes. Haines volunteered and we shot him and torpoon out."
"They got the torpoon?" Ken asked.
Sallorsen's arm raised in a pointing gesture. "Look."
* * * * *
Some fifty feet away from the Peary, on the side opposite to the one Ken Torrance had approached, a dimly discernible object lay in the mud. In miniature, it resembled the submarine: a cigar-shaped steel shell, held down to the sea-bottom by ropes bound over it. Cutting edges of steel had been fastened along its length.
"I see," said Ken slowly. "And its pilot?"
"Stayed in the torpoon thirty-six hours. Then went crazy. Put on sea-suit and tried to get back here. Whisk--they got him. Killed and mangled while we watched!"
"But didn't his torpoon have a nitro-shell gun? Couldn't he have fought them off for a time?"
"Exploring submarine, this! No guns in torpoons like whalers. Gun wouldn't help, anyway. These devils too fast. No use. No hope anywhere...." Sallorsen sank back against the bulkhead, his lips moving but no sound coming forth. Dully he stared ahead, through the submarine, for a moment before uttering a cackling mockery of a laugh and going on.
"Even after that, still hoped! Blew every tank on ship; blew out most of her oil. Threw out everything not vital. Lightened her as much as could. Machinery--detachable metal--fixtures--baggage--instruments--knives, plates, cups--everything! She rose a couple of feet--no more! Put motors at full speed--back and forth--again, again, again. Buoyancy--power--no good. No damn good!
"And then we tried the last chance. Explosives. Had quite a store, Nitromite, packed in cases; time-fuses to set it off. Had it for blasting ice. I sent up a charge and blew hole in the ice overhead, for our other torpoon.
"Nothing else left. Knew planes must be nearby, searching. Last torpoon was to shoot up to the hole--pilot to climb on ice and stay there to signal a plane."
"Did he get there?"
"Hell no!" Sallorsen cackled again. "It was roped like the other. Pilot tried to get back, but they got him like first. There's the torpoon--out ahead."
Ken could just make it out. It lay ahead, slightly to port, lashed down like its fellow by seaweed-ropes. His eyes were held by it, even when Sallorsen continued, in an almost hysterical voice:
"Since then--since then--you know. Week after week. Air getting worse. Rectifiers running down. No night, no day. Just the lights, and those damned devils outside. Wore sea-suits for a while; used twenty-nine of their thirty hours air-units. Old Professor Halloway died, and another man. Couldn't do anything for 'em. Just sit and watch. Head aching, throat choking--God!...
"Some of the men went mad. Tried to break out. Had to show gun. Quick death outside. Here, slow death, but always the chance that--Chance, hell! There's no chance left! Just this poison that used to be air, and those things outside, watching, watching, waiting--waiting for us to leave--waiting to get us all! Waiting...."
"Something's up!" said Ken Torrance suddenly. "They've got tired of waiting!"
CHAPTER V
The Last Assault
Sallorsen turned his head and followed the torpooner's intent, amazed gaze.
Ken said:
"There's proof of their intelligence! I've been watching--didn't realize at first. Look, here it comes!"
Several sealmen, while Sallorsen had been talking, had come dropping down from the main mass of the horde, and had grouped around the abandoned torpoon which lay some feet ahead of the submarine's bow. Expertly they had loosened the seaweed-ropes which bound it to the sea-floor, then slid back, watching alertly, as if expecting the torpoon to speed away of its own accord. Its batteries, of course, had worn out weeks before, so the steel shell did net budge. The sealmen came down close to it again, and lifted it.
They lifted it easily with their prehensile flipper-arms, and with maneuvering of delicate sureness guided it through the gash in the Peary's bow. Inside, they hesitated with it, midway between deck and ceiling of the flooded compartment. They poised for perhaps a full minute, judging the distance, while the two men stared; and then quickly their powerful tail flippers lashed out and the torpoon jumped ahead. It sped straight through the water, to crash its tough nose of steel squarely into the quarsteel pane of the watertight door, then rebounded, and fell to the deck.
"My God!" gasped Sallorsen. But Ken wasted no words then. He pressed closer to the quarsteel and examined it minutely. The substance showed no visible effect, but the action of the sealmen destroyed whatever hope he had felt.
The sealmen had swerved aside at the last minute; and now, picking up the torpoon again and guiding it back to the other end of the compartment, they hurled it once more with a resounding crash into the quarsteel pane.
"How long will it last under that?" Ken asked tersely.
Obviously, Sallorsen's wits were muddled at this turn. He remained gaping at the creatures and at the torpoon, now turned against its mother submarine. Ken repeated the question.
"How long? Who knows? It's as strong as steel, but--there's the pressure--and those blows hit one spot. Not--long."
* * * * *
Capping his words, there re-echoed again the loud crash of the torpoon's on the quarsteel. The sealmen were working in quick routine now; back and quickly forward, and then the crash and the reverberation; and again and again....
The ominous crash and ringing echoes regularly repeated, seemed to disorganise Ken's mind as he looked vainly for something with which to brace the door. Nothing unattached was left--nothing! He ran and examined the quarsteel pane again, and this time his brain heated in alarm. A thin line had shot through the quarsteel--the beginning of a crack.
"Back!" Ken shouted to the still staring Sallorsen. "Back to the third compartment. This door's going!"
"Yes," Sallorsen mumbled. "It'll go. So will the others. They'll smash them all. And when this is flooded--no hope of running the submarine again. Controls in here."
"That's too damned bad!" Ken said roughly. "Are there any sea-suits, food, supplies in here?"
"Only food. In those lockers."
"I'll take it. Get into that third compartment--hear me?" ordered Kenneth Torrance. "And have its door ready to close!"
He shoved Sallorsen away, opened the indicated lockers and piled his arms with the tins revealed. He had time for no more than one load. He jumped back into the third compartment of the Peary just as a splintering crash sounded from behind. The door between was swung closed and locked just as the one being battered crashed inward.
Turning, Ken saw that the torpoon had cracked through the weakened quarsteel and tumbled in a mad cascade of water to the deck of the abandoned second compartment. In dread silence, he, with Sallorsen and those of the men who had strength and curiosity enough to come forward, watched the compartment rapidly fill--watched until they saw the water pressed high against the door. And then horror swept over Ken Torrance.
* * * * *
Water! There was a trickle of water down the quarsteel he was leaning against! A fault along the hinge of the door--either its construction, or because it had not been closed properly.
Ken pointed it out to the captain.
"Look!" he said. "A leak already--just from the pressure! This door won't last more than a couple of minutes when they start on it--"
Sallorsen stared stupidly. As for the rest; Ken might not have spoken. They were as if in a trance, watching dumbly, with lungs automatically gasping for air.
One of the seal-creatures eeled through the shattered quarsteel of the first door and swam slowly around the newly flooded compartment. At once it was joined by five other lithe, sleek shapes which, with placid, liquid eyes, inspected the compartment minutely. They came in a group right up to the next door that barred their way and, with no visible emotion, stared through the quarsteel pane at the humans who stared at them. And then they gracefully turned and slid to the battered torpoon.
"Back!" Ken shouted, "You men!" He shook them, shoved them roughly back toward the fourth, and last, compartment. Weakly, like automatons they shuffled into it. The torpooner said bruskly to Sallorsen:
"Carry those tins of food back. Hurry! Is there anything stored in here we'll need? Sallorsen! Captain! Is there anything--"
The captain looked at him dully; then, understanding, a cackle came from his throat. "Don't need anything. This is the end. Last compartment. Finish!"
"Snap out of it!" Ken cried. "Come on, Sallorsen--there's a chance yet. Is there anything we'll need in here?"
"Sea-suits--in those lockers."
Ken Torrance swung around and rapidly opened the lockers. Pulling out the bulky suits, he cried:
"You carry that food back. Then come and help me."
* * * * *
But of the corner of his eye, as he worked, he could see the ominous preparations beyond in the flooded compartment--the sealmen raising the torpoon, guiding it back to the far end; leveling it out. Ken was sure the door could not stand more than two or three blows at the most. Two or three minutes, that meant--but all the sea-suits had to go back into the fourth compartment!
He was in torment as he worked. For him, the conditions were just as bad as for the men who had lived below in the submarine for a month; the poisonous, foul air racked him just as much; what breath he got he fought for just as painfully. But in his body was a greater store of strength, and fresher muscles; and he taxed his body to its very limit.
Panting, his head seeming on the point of splitting, Ken Torrance stumbled through into the last compartment laden with a pile of sea-suits. He dropped them clattering in a pile around his feet and forced himself back again. Another trip; and another....
It would never have been done had not Sallorsen and Lawson, the scientist, come to his aid. The help they offered was meager, and slow, but it sufficed. Laden for the fifth time, Ken heard what he had been anticipating for every second of the all too short, agonizing minutes: a sharp, grinding crack, and the following reverberation. He snatched a glance around to see the torpoon falling to the deck of the second compartment--the sealmen lifting it swiftly again--and a thin but definite sliver in the quarsteel of the door.
But the last suit was gotten into the fourth compartment, and the connecting door closed and carefully locked and bolted. The removal of the suits, had been achieved--but what now?
Panting, completely exhausted, Ken forced his brain to the question. From every side he attacked the problem, but nowhere could he find the loophole he sought. Everything, it seemed, had been tried, and had failed, during the Peary's long captivity. There was nothing left. True, he had his torpoon, and its nitro-shell gun with a clip of nineteen shells; but what use were shells? Even if each one accounted for one of the sealmen, there would still remain a swarm.
And the sea-suits. He had struggled for them and had saved them, but what use could he put them to? Go out leading a desperate final sally for the hole in the ice above? Death in minutes!
No hope. Nothing. Not even a fighting chance. These seal-creatures, strange seed of the Arctic ice, had trapped the Peary all too well. On the roll of mysteriously missing ships would her name go down; and he, Ken Torrance, would be considered a lunatic who had sought suicide, and found it....
* * * * *
Of the twenty-one survivors of the Peary's officers and crew, only a dozen had the will to watch the inexorable advance of the sealmen. The rest lay in various attitudes on the deck of the rear compartment, showing no sign of life save torturous, shallow pantings for air and, occasionally, spasmodic clutchings at their throats and chests, as they tried to fight off the deadly, invisible foe that was slowly strangling them.
Ken Torrance, Sallorsen, the scientist, Lawson, and a few others were pressed together at the last watertight door, peering through the quarsteel at the sea-creatures' systematic assault on the door leading into the third compartment. A straight, hard smash at it; another final splintering smash--and again the torpoon pushed through in the van of a cascade of icy, greenish water, which quickly claimed the control compartment for the attackers behind. The creatures were growing bolder. More and more of them had entered the submarine, and soon each open compartment was filled from deck to ceiling with the slowly turning, graceful brown bodies, inspecting minutely the countless wheels and levers and gauges, and inspecting also, in turns, the pale, worn faces that stared with dull eyes at them through the sole remaining door.
There was no further retreat, now. Behind was only water and the swarm that passed to and fro through it. Water and sealmen--ahead, above, to the sides, behind--everywhere. Cooped in their transparent cell, the crew of the submarine Peary waited the end.
* * * * *
Once more, as well as he could with his throbbing head and heavy, choking body, Kenneth Torrance tracked over the old road that had brought him nowhere, but was the only road open. Carefully he took stock of everything he had that he might possibly fight with.
There were sea-suits for the men, and in each suit an hour's supply of artificial but invigorating air. Two port-locks, one on each side of the stern compartment. A torpoon, with a gun and nineteen shells. Nothing else? There seemed to be, in his mind, a vague memory of something else ... something that might possibly be of use ... something.... But he could not remember. Again and again the agony of slow strangulation he was going through drove everything but the consciousness of pain from his shirking mind. But there was something else--and perhaps it was the key. Perhaps if he could only remember it--whatever it was--whether a tangible thing or merely a passing idea of hours ago--the way out would be suddenly revealed.
But he could not remember. He had the sea-suits, the port-locks and the torpoon: what possible pattern could he weave them into to bring deliverance?
No, there was nothing. Not even a girder that could be unfastened in time to brace the last door. No way of prolonging this last stand!
Beside Ken, the strained, panting voice of Lawson whispered:
"Getting ready. Over soon now. All over."
All save five of the sealmen had left the third compartment, to join the swarm constantly swimming around and over the submarine outside. The five remaining were the crew for the battering ram. With measured and deliberate movements they ranged their lithe bodies beside the torpoon, lifted it and bore it smoothly back to the far end of the compartment. There they poised for a minute, while from the men watching sounded a pathetic sigh of anticipation.
As one, the five seal-creatures lunged forward with their burden.
Crash! And the following dull reverberation.
The last assault had begun.
CHAPTER VI
In a Biscuit Can
Ken Torrance glanced with dull, hopeless eyes over the compartment he stood in. Figures stretched out all over the deck, gasping, panting, strangling--men waiting in agony for death. His head sank down, and he wiped wet hands across his aching forehead. Nothing to do but wait--wait for the end--wait as the patient horde outside had been waiting in the sea-gloom for their moment of triumph, when the soft bodies inside the Peary would be theirs to rip and mangle....
A dragging sound brought Ken's eyes wearily up and to the side. One of the crew who had been lying on the deck was dragging his body painfully toward a row of lockers at one side of the compartment. The man's eyes were feverishly intent on the lockers.
Ken watched his progress dully, without thinking, as inch by inch he forced himself through the other bodies sprawled in his way. He saw him reach the lockers, and for a minute, gasping, lie there. He saw a clawing arm stretch almost up to the catch on one locker, while the man whimpered like a child at his lack of quick success.
Crash! The grinding blow of the torpoon hitting the quarsteel clanged out from behind. But Ken's mind was all on the reaching man's strange actions. He saw the fingers at last succeed in touching the catch. The door of the locker opened outward, and eagerly the man reached inside and pulled. With a thump, a row of heavy objects strung together rolled out onto the deck--and Ken Torrance sprang suddenly to the man's side:
"What are you doing?" he cried.
The man looked up sullenly. He mumbled:
"Damn fish--won't get me. I'll blow us all to hell, first!"
At that the connection struck Ken.
"Then that's nitromite!" he shouted. "That's the idea--the nitromite!"
And stooping down, he wrenched the rope of small black boxes which contained the explosive from the man who had worked so painfully to get them.
"I'll do the blowing, boy!" he said. "Don't worry; I'll do it complete!"
* * * * *
Ken, holding the rope of explosives, crossed the deck and pulled Sallorsen and Lawson around. Their worn faces, with lifeless, bloodshot eyes, met his own strong features, and he said forcefully:
"Now listen! I need your help. I've found our one last chance for life. We three are the strongest, and we've got to work like hell. Understand?"
His enthusiasm and the vigor of his words roused them.
"Yes," said Lawson. "What--we do?"
"You say there's an hour's air left in the sea-suits?" Torrance asked the captain.
"Yes. An hour."
"Then get the men into the suits," the torpooner ordered. "Help the weaker ones; slap them till they obey you!" There came the ugly, deafening crash of the hurled torpoon into the compartment door. Ken finished grimly: "And for God's sake, hurry! I'll explain later."
Sallorsen and Lawson unquestioningly obeyed. Ken had reached the spirit in them, the strength not physical, that had all but been driven out by the long, hopeless weeks and the poisonous stuff that passed for air, and it had risen and was responding. Sallorsen's voice, for the first time in days, had his old stern tone of command in it as, calling on everything within him, he shouted:
"Men, there's still a chance! Everyone into sea-suits! Quick!"
A few of the blue-skinned figures lying panting on the deck looked up. Fewer moved. They did not at once understand. Only four or five dragged themselves with pathetic eagerness towards the pile of sea-suits and the little store of fresh air that remained in them. Sallorsen repeated his command.
"Hurry! Men--you, Hartley and Robson and Carroll--your suits on! There's air in them! Put 'em on!"
* * * * *
And then Lawson was among them, shaking the hopeless, dying forms, rousing them to the chance for life. Several more crawled to obey. By the time the next crash of the torpoon came, eleven out of the twenty-one survivors were working with clumsy, eager fingers at their sea-suits, pushing feet and legs in, drawing the tough fabric up over their bodies, sliding their arms in, and struggling with quick panting breaths to raise the heavy helmets and fasten them into place. Then--air!
Again the ear-shattering crash. The scientist and the captain drove at the rest of the crew. They stumbled, those two fighting men, and twice Lawson went down in a heap as his legs gave under him; but he got up again, and they began dragging the suits to the men who had not even the strength to rise, shoving inert limbs into place, switching on the air-units inside the helmets and, gasping themselves, fastening the helmets down. Theirs was a conflict as cruel, as hard and brutal as men smashing at each other with fists, and they then proved their right to the shining roll of honor, wherever and whatever that roll may be. They fought on past pain, past sickness, past poisoning, that man of action and men of the laboratory.
And outside that foul transparent pit the tempo quickened also. The sledging blows at the last door came quicker. All around the captive Peary the sleek brown bodies stirred uneasily. For weeks there had been but little activity inside the submarine; now, all at once, three of the figures that were men whipped the others into action, rousing those lying dying on the deck--working, working. Observing this, the lithe seal bodies moved with new nervous, restless strokes, to and fro, never pausing--passing up and down in a milling stream the length of the craft, clustering closest outside the walls of the fourth compartment, where they pressed as close as they could, their wide brown eyes already on the haggard forms that worked inside, their smooth bodies patterned by the constantly shifting shadows of their fellows above and behind.
So they watched and waited, while in the third compartment the battered torpoon was slung at the last door, and drawn back, and slung again--waited for the final moment, the crisis of their month-long siege beneath the floes of the silent Arctic sea!
* * * * *
Kenneth Torrance worked by himself.
He saw that Sallorsen and Lawson had answered his call; man after man was clad in his suit and sucking in the incomparably fresher, though artificial, air of the units. As he had hoped, that air was revitalizing the worn-out bodies rapidly, giving them new strength and clearing their brains. His plan required that--strength for the men to move and act for themselves--sane heads!
The plan was basically simple. Bringing his best concentration to the all-important details, Ken started to build the road to the world above.
First he opened the inner door of the starboard port-lock, wherein lay his torpoon. Opening the entrance panel of the steel shell, he quickly transferred within the cans of compressed food retrieved from the second compartment. When he had finished, there was left barely room for the pilot's body.
And then the nitromite.
The explosive was carried by the Peary for the blasting of such ice floes as might trap her. It was contained for chemical stability in a half dozen six-inch-square, water-proof boxes, strung one after another on an interconnecting wired rope. Ken would need them all; he wished he had five times as many. It would not matter if the whole of the Peary were shattered to slivers.
Ken tied the rope of boxes into a strong unit, as small as it could be made. Firing and timing mechanisms were contained in each unit: he would only have to set one of them. He wrapped the whole charge, except for one small corner, in several pieces of the men's discarded clothing--monkey jackets, thick sweaters, a dirty towel--and stuffed it in an empty tin container for sea-biscuits.
* * * * *
All this had taken only minutes. But in those minutes the quarsteel of the watertight door had been subjected to half a dozen smashing blows, and already a flaw had appeared in the pane. Another grinding crunch, and there would be the visible beginning of a crack. Three more, perhaps, and the door would be down.
But the plan was laid, the counter move ready; and, as Sallorsen and Lawson, last of them all, got into suits, Ken Torrance, in short, gasping sentences, explained it.
"All the nitromite's in this," Ken said. "I hope it's enough. In a moment I'll set the timing to explode it in one minute--then eject it from the empty torpoon port-lock. It's a gamble, but I think the explosion should kill every damned seal around the sub. Water carries such shocks for miles, so it should stun, if not kill, all the others within a long radius. See? We're inside sub, largely protected. When the stuff explodes, you and men make for the hole you blew in the ice above."
Another crash sent echoes resounding through the remaining compartment. All around the three were suit-clad figures, grotesque clumsy giants, all feeling new strength as they gulped with leathern throats and lungs at the artificial air which was giving them a respite, however brief, from the death they had been sinking into. In the third compartment of the Peary, five seal-like creatures with swift and beautiful movements picked up their torpoon battering ram again; while all around the outside of the Peary their hundreds of watching fellows pressed in closely.
* * * * *
"Yes!" cried Lawson, the scientist. "But the explosion--it might shatter the ship!"
"No matter; I expect it to!" answered Ken. "Then you can leave through a crack instead of a port-lock."
"Yes--but you!" objected the captain. "Get on a suit!"
"No; I'm jumping into my torpoon in the other port-lock. I've got the food in it. Now, Sallorsen, this is your job. I'll be in my torpoon, but I won't be able to let myself out the port. You open it, right after the explosion. Understand?"
"Yes," replied Sallorsen, and Lawson nodded.
"All right," gasped Ken Torrance. "Empty the chamber." As the captain did so, Ken opened the lid of the biscuit can and adjusted the timing device on the exposed unit in the clothing-wrapped bundle. Then he replaced it, ticking, in the can and thrust the can bodily into the emptied chamber of the port-lock. He closed the inner door of the chamber, and said to the men by him:
"Close your face-plates!"
And Ken pushed the release button: and then he was running to the other port-lock and to his torpoon, and harnessing himself in.
His brain teemed with the possibilities of the situation as he lay stretched out in the torpoon, waiting. How much would the submarine be smashed? Would the charge of nitromite, besides killing the sealmen, kill everyone inside the Peary? For that matter, would it affect the sealmen at all? How much could the creatures stand? And would the firing mechanism work? And then would he himself be able to get out; or would the lock in which the torpoon lay be damaged by the explosion and trap him there?
Seconds, only seconds, to wait, small fractions of time--but they were more important than the days and the weeks that the Peary had lain, a lashed-down captive, under the Arctic ice; for in these seconds was to be given fate's final answer to the prayer and courage of them all.
Time for Ken expanded. Surely the charge should have gone off long before this! The pulse beat so loudly in his brain that he could hear nothing else. He counted: "... nine, ten, eleven--" Had the fuse failed? Surely by now--"... twelve, thirteen, fourteen--"
On that the submarine Peary leaped. Ken Torrance, himself inside the torpoon, felt a sharp roll of thunder made tangible, and then complete darkness took him....
CHAPTER VII
The Awakening
He had no idea of how long he had been unconscious when, his full senses returning, he eagerly peered ahead through the torpoon's vision-plate. For some seconds he could see nothing; but he knew, at least, that the torpoon had survived the shock, for he was dry and snug in his harness. And then his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and he saw that he was outside the submarine. Sallorsen had followed his orders; had opened the port-lock! The undersea reaches lay ahead of him, and the way was clear.
Ken stared into a gray, silent sea, no longer shadowed with moving brown-skinned bodies. He tried his motors. Their friendly, rhythmic hum answered him, and carefully he slipped into gear and crept up off the sea-floor. He did not dare use his lights.
The Peary was a great, blurred shadow, a dead thing without glow or movement, with no figures of sealmen around her. As Ken's eyes gained greater vision, he was able to make out a wide, long rent running clear across the top of the fourth compartment of the submarine. The explosion had done that to her, but what had it done to her crew? What had it done to the sealmen?
He saw the sealmen first. Some were quite close, but in the murk he had missed them. Silent specters, they were apparently lifeless, strewn all around at different levels, and most of them floating slowly up toward the dim ice ceiling.
But up under the ice was movement! Living figures were there! And at the sight Kenneth Torrance's lips spread in their first real grin for days. The plan had worked! The sealmen had been destroyed, and already some of the Peary's men were up there and fumbling clumsily across the hundred feet which separated them from the hole in the ice that was the last step to the world above.
* * * * *
A ghostly gray haze of light filtered downward through the water from the hole. Ken counted twelve figures making their way to it. As he wondered about the rest of the crew, he saw three bulging, swaying shapes suddenly emerge from the split in the top of the Peary, and begin an easy rise toward the ice ceiling ninety feet above. There was no apparent danger, and they went up quite slowly, with occasional brief pauses to avoid the risk of the bends. Clasped together, the group of three were, and when they were halfway to the glassy ceiling of the ice, three more left the rent in the submarine and followed likewise. Twelve men were at the top; six others were swimming up; three more were yet to leave the submarine--and after they had abandoned her, he, Ken, would follow with the torpoon and the food it contained.
So he thought, watching from where he lay, down below, and there was in him a great weariness after the triumph so bitterly fought for had been achieved. He rested through minutes of quiet and relaxation, watching what he had brought about; but only minutes--for suddenly without warning all security was gone.
From out the murky shadows to the left a sleek shape came flashing with great speed, to jerk Ken Torrance's eyes around and to widen them with quick alarm.
A sealman! A sealman alive, and moving--and vengeful! A sealman which the explosion of nitromite had not reached!
Doubtless the lone creature was surprised upon seeing all its fellows motionless, drifting like corpses upward, and the men of the Peary escaping. With graceful, beautiful speed, a liquid streak, it flashed into the scene, eeling up and around and down, trying to understand what extraordinary thing had happened. But finally it slowed down and hovered some thirty feet directly above the dark hull of the Peary.
The men rising toward the ice had seen the sealman at the same time Ken Torrance had, and at once increased their efforts, fearing immediate attack. Quickly the two groups shot to the top where the other twelve were, and began a desperate fumbling progress over toward the hole that alone gave exit. But the sealman paid no attention to them. It was looking at something below.
Ken saw what it was.
The last three men were leaving the Peary. Awkward, swaying objects, they rose up directly in front of the hovering creature.
* * * * *
With an enraged thrust of flippers, it drove at them. The three humans--Sallorsen, Lawson and one other, Ken knew they must be--were clasped together, and the long, lithe, muscular body smote them squarely, sent them whirling and helpless in different directions in the sea-gloom. One of them was driven down by the force of the blow, and that one the sealman chose to finish first. It lashed at him, its strong teeth bared to rip the sea-suit, concentrating on him all the rage and all the thirst for vengeance it had.
But by then, down below, the torpoon's motors were throbbing at full power; the thin directional rudders were slanting; the torpoon was turning and pointing its nose upward; and Ken Torrance, his face bleak as the Arctic ice, was grasping the trigger of the nitro-shell gun.
He might perhaps have saved the doomed man had he swept straight up then and fired, but a quick mounting of the odds distracted him for a fatal second. Out of the deeper gloom at the left came a swiftly growing shadow, and Ken, with a sinking in his stomach, knew it for a second sealman.
Then another similar shadow brought his eyes to the right.
Two more sealmen! Three now--and how many more might come?
At once Ken knew what he must do before ever he fired a shell at one of the brown-skinned shapes. The man just attacked had to be sacrificed in the interests of the rest. The torpoon swerved, thrust up toward the ice ceiling under the full force of her motors; and when halfway to it, and her gun-containing bow was pointed at a spot in the ice only twenty feet in front of the foremost of the men stroking desperately towards the distant exit-hole, Ken pressed the trigger; and again, and again and again....
Twelve shells, quick, on the same path, bit into the ice. Almost immediately came the first explosion. It was swelled by the others. The ice shivered and crumbled in jagged splinters--and then there was a new column of light reaching down from the world of air and life into the darkness of the undersea. A roughly circular hole gaped in the ice sixty or seventy feet nearer the swimming men than the old one.
"That'll give 'em a chance," muttered Kenneth Torrance. He plunged the torpoon around and down. "And now for a fight!"
* * * * *
Without pause, now, there was, straight ahead, a hard, desperate duel, a fitting last fight for any torpoon or any man riding one. Each of the seven shells left in the nitro-gun's magazine had to count; and the first of them gave a good example.
Ken turned down in time to see the death of the man first attacked. His suit was ripped clean across, his air of life went up in bubbles, and the water came in. The seal-creature lunged at its falling victim a last time, and as it did so its smooth brown body crossed Ken's sights. The torpooner fired, and saw his shell strike home, for the body shuddered, convulsed, and the sealman, internally torn, went sinking in a dark cloud after the human it had slain.
That sight gave pause to the other two creatures that had arrived, and gave Ken Torrance a good second chance. Motor throbbing, the torpoon turned like a thing alive. Its snout and gun-sights swerving straight toward the next target. But, when just on the point of pressing the trigger, Ken's torpoon was struck a terrific blow and tumbled over and over. The whole external scene blurred to him, and only after a moment was he able to bring the torpoon back to an even keel.
He saw what had happened. While he had been sighting on the second seal-creature, the third had attacked the torpoon from the rear by striking it with all the strength of its heavy, muscular body. But it did not follow up its attack. For it had crashed in to the whirling propeller, and now it was hanging well back, its head horribly gashed by the steel blades.
For a moment the three combatants hung still, both sealmen staring at the torpoon as if in wonder that it could strike both with its bow and stern, and Ken Torrance rapidly glancing over the situation. The remaining two of the last group of three men, he saw, had reached the top, and the foremost of the Peary's crew were within several feet of the new hole in the ice. In a very short time all would be out and safe. Until then he had to hold off the two sealmen.
Two? There were no longer only two, but five--ten--a dozen--and more. The dead were coming to life!
Here and there in the various levels of drifting, motionless brown bodies that he thought the explosion had killed, one was stirring, awakening! The explosion had but stunned many or most of them, and now they were returning to consciousness!
CHAPTER VIII
The Duel
Upon seeing this, all hope for life left Ken. He had only six shells left, and at best he could kill only six sealmen. Already, there were more than twenty about him, completely encircling the torpoon. They seemed afraid of it, and yet desirous of finishing it--they hung back, watching warily the thing that could strike and hurt from either end; but Ken knew, of course, that he could not count on their inaction long. One concerted charge would mean his quick end, and the death of most of the men above.
Well, there was only one thing to do--try to hold them off until those men above had climbed out, every one.
With this plan in mind, he maneuvered for a commanding position. Quietly he slid his motor into gear, and slowly the torpoon rose. At this first movement, the wall of hesitating brown bodies broke back a little. It quickly pressed in again, however, as the torpoon came to a halt where Ken wanted it--a position thirty feet beneath, and slightly to one side, of the escaping men above, with an angle of fire commanding the area the sealmen would have to cross to attack them.
Almost at once came action. One of the surrounding creatures swerved suddenly up toward the men. Instinctively angling the torp, Ken sent a nitro-shell at it; and the chance aim was good. The projectile caught the sealman squarely, and, after the convulsion, it began to drift downward, its body torn apart.
"That'll teach you, damn you!" Ken muttered savagely, and, to heighten the effect he had created, he brought his sights to bear on another sealman in the circle around him--and fired and killed.
This sight of sudden death told on the others. They grew obviously more fearful and gave back, though still forming a solid circle around the torpoon. The circle was ever thickening and deepening downward as more of those that the explosion had rendered unconscious returned to life.
And then, above, the first man reached the hole, clawed at its rough edges and levered himself through.
That was a signal. From somewhere beneath, two brown bodies flashed upward in attack. Fearing a general rush at any second, Ken fired twice swiftly. One shell missed, but the other slid to its mark. Almost alongside its fellow, one of the creatures was shattered and torn, and that evidently altered the other's intentions, for it abandoned the attack and sought safety in the mass of its fellows on the farther side.
Another respite. Another man through the hole. And but two nitro-shells left!
* * * * *
The deadly circle, like wolves around a lone trapper who crouches close to his dying fire, pressed in a little; and by their ominous quietness, by the sight of their eyes all turned in on him, their concerted inching closer, Ken sensed the nearness of the charge that would finish him. All this in deep silence, there in the gloomy quarter-light. He could not yell and brandish his fists at them as the trapper by the fire might have done to win a few extra minutes. The only cards he had to play were two shells--and one was needed now!
He fired it with deliberate, sure aim, and grunted as he saw its victim convulse and die, with dark blood streaming. Again the swarm hesitated.
Ken risked a glance above. Only three men left, he saw; and one was pulled through the hole as he watched. Below, in one place, several seal-creatures surged upward.
"Get back, damn you!" he cursed harshly. "All right--take it! That's the last!"
And the last shell hissed out from the gun even as the last man, above, was pulled through up into the air and safety.
Ken felt that he had given half his life with that final shell. Completely surrounded by a hundred or more of the sealmen, he could not possibly hope to maneuver the torpoon up to the hole in the ice and leave it, without being overwhelmed. He had held off the swarm long enough for the others to escape, but for himself it was the end.
So he thought, and wondered just when that end would come. Soon, he knew. It would not take them long to overcome their fear when they saw that he no longer reached out and struck them down in sudden bloody death. Now it was their turn.
"Anyway," the torpooner murmured, "I got 'em out. I saved them."
But had he? Suddenly his mind turned up a dreadful thought. He had saved them from the sealmen, but they were up on the ice without food. There had been no time to apportion rations in the submarine; all the supplies were stacked around him in the torpoon!
Searching planes would eventually appear overhead, but if he could not get the food up to the men it meant their death as surely as if they had stayed locked in the Peary!
But how could he do it without shells, and with that living wall edging inch by inch upon him, visibly on the brink of rushing him. Some carried ropes with which they would lash the torpoon down as they had the others. Must all he and those men had gone through, be in vain? Must he die--and the others? For certainly without food, those men above on the lonely ice fields, all of them weakened by the long siege in the submarine, would perish quickly....
And then a faintly possible plan came to him. It involved an attempt to bluff the seal-creatures.
* * * * *
Thirty feet above the lone man in the torpoon was the hole he had blasted in the ice. He knew that from the cone of light which filtered down; he did not dare to take his eyes for a second from the creatures around him, for all now depended on his judging to a fraction just when the lithe, living wall would leap to overwhelm him.
Now the torpoon was enclosed by what was more a sphere of brown bodies than a circle. But it was not a solid sphere. It stretched thinly to within a few feet of the ice ceiling where, in one place, was the hole Ken had blown in the ice.
He began to play the game. He edged the gears into reverse, gently angled the diving-planes, and slowly the torpoon tilted in response and began to sink back to the dark sea-floor.
Motion appeared in the curved facade of sleek brown heads and bodies in front and to the sides. The creatures behind and below, Ken could not see; he could only trust to the fear inspired by the damage his propeller had wreaked on one of them, to hold them back. However, he could judge the movements of those behind and below by the synchronized movements of those in front; for the sealmen, in this tense siege, seemed to move as one--just as they would move as one when a leader got the courage to charge across the gap to the torpoon.
In reverse, slowly, the torpoon backed downward. Every minute seemed a separate eternity of time, for Ken dared not move fast at this juncture, and he needed to retreat not less than fifty feet.
Fifty feet! Would they hold off long enough for him to make it?
Foot by foot the torpoon edged down at her forty-five-degree angle, and with every foot the watching bodies became visibly bolder. There was no light inside the torpoon--inner light would decrease the visibility outside--but Ken knew her controls as does the musician his instrument. Slowly the propeller whirled over, the torpoon dropped, slowly the diffused light from the hole above diminished--and slowly the eager wall of sealmen followed and crept in.
Twenty-five feet down; and then, after a long time, thirty-five feet, and forty. Seventy feet up, in all, to the hole in the ice....
Ken wanted seventy-five feet, but he could not have it. For the wall of sleek bodies broke. One or two of the creatures surged forward; other followed; they were coming!
The slim torpoon leaped under the unleashed power of her motors--forward.
* * * * *
For one awful moment Ken thought he was finished. The vision of the hole was obscured by a twisting, whirling maelstrom of bodies, and the torpoon quivered and shook like a living thing in agony under glancing blows.
But then came a patch of light, a pathway of light, leading straight up at a forty-five-degree angle to the hole in the ice above.
Sealmen and torpoon had leaped forward at the same moment. Doubtless the creatures had not expected the shell to move so suddenly and decisively ahead, so that when it did, those in the van swerved to escape head-on contact.
The torpoon gained speed all too slowly for her pilot. It naturally took time to gain full forward speed from a standing start. But she moved, and she moved fast, and after her poured the full tide of sealmen, now that they saw their prey running in retreat.
From somewhere ahead appeared a rope, noosed to catch the fleeing prey. It slipped off the side. Another touched the bow, but it too was thrown off. The torpoon's forward momentum was now great; she was sweeping up at the full speed Ken had gone back to be able to attain. He needed full speed! The plan would fail at the last moment without it!
Another rope; but it was the seal-creature's last gesture. Through the side plates of quarsteel the light grew fast; the ice was only ten feet away; a slight directional correction brought the hole dead ahead--and at full speed, twenty-four miles an hour, the torpoon passed through and into the thin air of the world of light and life.
Right out of the hole, a desperate fugitive from below, she leaped, her propeller suddenly screaming, and arched high through the air before she dove with a rending, splintering crash onto the upper side of the sheet ice.
And the sun of a cloudless, perfect Arctic day beat down on her; and men were all around, eagerly reaching to open her entrance port. It was done.
* * * * *
Kenneth Torrance, dazed, battered, hurting in every joint but conscious, found the torpoon's port open, and felt hands reach in and clasp him. Wearily he helped them lift him out into the thin sunlight. Sitting down, slitting his eyes against the sudden glare, he peered around.
Captain Sallorsen was beside him, supporting him with one hand and pounding him on the back with the other; and there in front was the bearded scientist, Lawson, and the rest of the men.
Ken took a great gulp of the clean, cold air.
"Gosh!" was all he could say. "Gosh, that tastes good!"
"Man, you did it!" shouted Sallorsen. "How, in God's name, I don't know--but you did it!"
"He did!" said Lawson. "And he did it all himself. Even to the food, which should keep us till a plane comes by. If they haven't stopped searching for us."
His words reminded Ken of something.
"Oh, there'll be a plane over," he said. "Forgot to tell you, but I stole this torpoon--see?--and told the fellows they could come and get it somewhere right around here."
Kenneth Torrance grinned, and glanced down at the battered steel shell which had borne him out of the water below.
"And here it is," he finished. "A little damaged--but then I didn't promise it would be as good as new!"
LONESOME HEARTS
By RUSS WINTERBOTHAM
It seems unnecessary to say that my story began a long time ago, but I do not intend to be subtle. I am not clever and my lying is unpolished, almost amateurish. So I certainly could not be subtle, which requires both cleverness and an ability to tell the truth and a lie in the same breath.
Let us turn back the clock a few ages. I was lying in the sun thinking of love. I understand that you human beings have an aversion to biological discussion, so I will not go into detail. But I must remind you that my love life is quite different from yours, for I am from another planet. At the time under discussion, I was most deeply in love.
My heart's desire had no shape, the lovely creature. She had no intelligence, the divine soul. But she was the greatest bit of protoplasm in any galaxy you could name. By our standards, I probably might be called handsome. I was young and healthy. I had all of my genes and chromosomes. My color was the dirty green that is associated with beauty.
The sun warmed my body and the tidal undulation of my planet's surface rocked me gently. And then she came into my life. She floated gently in the breeze, her dainty figure held aloft by a mere hint of levitation. Sparks of static electricity shot from her tender cilia so brightly that I was forced to exude a layer of protective fibre to protect my visual buds. She sucked a deep breath of cyanic gas into her pulmonary pouch and spoke to me sweetly with a voice like distant thunder.
"My dear Yljm, the world is coming to an end."
I could not believe her, for she had no intelligence. She only loved to talk. "Perhaps," I said, "but not today."
"Very soon, then," said she. Her name was Mjly.
I watched her with patronizing amusement. The static electricity showed that she was nervous and upset, but people often get nervous and upset over trivial matters. "Now, how," I reasoned, "could our world come to an end? The other planet has gone on for thousands of years without colliding with us. We circle it, in fact."
"No," Mjly said, "that is not our doom. Actually our world will not cease to exist. Life will end here, that is all."
"Ah," I said. "Our atmosphere is escaping into space." I sucked air, viciously. True, the air was thin. True, the atmosphere was escaping. But there would be breathable amounts for many thousands of centuries yet to come.
"Not the air. The food is all gone. Things we eat have ceased to exist."
I levitated myself and looked out over the throbbing land. A few years ago, this land had been covered with vegetation. I had come to take vegetation so much for granted that I'd ceased to notice it. Now it was gone. There were no round fruits growing from tender grasses, no tubers dangling from the fungus trees, no legume vines sprawling over the rocks. Everywhere lay desert, barren dunes shaking their crests with tidal motion.
I lowered myself to the ground and dug my big fibrosities into the sod. No green leaves grew there beneath the surface. The soil was dead. "This will seriously interfere with our future, Mjly," I said.
"We might eat each other," she replied, "but then there would be no one left."
"No one? There are many others here."
"The others are dying," said Mjly, blinking her otic nerves eerily. "We soon will be the only ones left."
It was indeed a senseless thing to do, to die just because there was no means of going on living. But I must admit that I was tempted for a moment. But I hung onto myself, for there was Mjly, and as long as she lived, there was a reason for me to live too.
"It's not a cheerful prospect," I said, "but I suppose death by starvation is the best way out. We will face death as we have lived, cheerfully and fortuitously."
"And why should we die, when there is another world so close?" she asked.
"Are you suggesting interplanetary flight, my dear?" I was amused again, even though there was little enough left to be amused at.
She crinkled her sense of smell in reply, and I realized I was not being amused at the right time. Anchoring herself by magnetic processes, she began to weave the atmosphere delicately with her taste-bud tendrils. Quickly she hollowed the air molecules into a reflective mirror, and brought it to focus on our neighboring world. I levitated myself into a position so that I could look into the mirror.
The near planet was quite satisfactory. It was the one you know as the earth. It was young. It was green. Huge fern-like plants grew abundantly on its surface. It was full of food. And near.
"The trip could be made by levitation," Mjly said.
I hung back. "Animals might live there. We'd be devoured."
"I am not afraid," she said.
"We might not get hungry for a time. Let us linger here awhile. Later when we get desperate, there will be time enough for interplanetary flight." I hated the thought of stuffing myself full of air enough to last for the long trip.
Mjly lowered her visual buds. "I am going to become a mother," she said.
"Go then, and become a mother. I'll stay here till I get hungry and then join you."
Mjly unflexed her sense of touch and I felt sorry for her. "If I could be sure," I said, "that no wild animals live on the earth, I'd go sooner."
She snapped her sense of balance in happiness. "I will go first," said she. "If everything is pleasant and safe, I will return and let you know."
I nodded my otic nerves and off she went.
As you human beings are doubtless aware, space levitation is quite complicated, but not beyond accomplishment. Once you are able to reach the speed of escape the rest is easy. But Mjly was young and strong and soon she had disappeared from sight traveling at a tremendous velocity. I followed her as long as I could with the telescope and then I lowered myself to the tidal crest of a nearby sand dune and lost myself in metaphysical thoughts.
Almost half a year later I realized that Mjly had been gone longer than I expected. Either she had been eaten by wild animals on the earth, or she had forgotten me.
I was beginning to get lonesome and in a few more months I would get hungry. At the thought of enduring two such excruciating pains at a single time, I decided to risk my life. I would travel through space to the earth and try to find my beloved.
As you may have guessed, the planet on which we had been living is the one you now know as the Moon, and the distance to the earth is comparatively small. The sand dunes now have hardened and the tidal sway of its surface can be felt only slightly. The moon no longer turns on its axis and it has no sweetly scented cyanide in its atmosphere. It has no atmosphere of any sort. But it stands now as it did when I left it, glorious in death. Since I departed, no living thing has trod its soil.
My scientific sense instinctively came to the rescue as I approached the earth. I felt a strong gravity wrenching at my vitals and so instead of trying reverse levitation, I spread my processes so that the atmosphere caught in the folds of my skin and I came floating gently down to the ground without harm.
The earth was much as it had appeared through the molecule telescope. It was covered with green vegetation, good, rich, nourishing stuff. And there was enough to feed Mjly and me for a million years.
There were no animals of any sort. Again I went to my scientific sense for the answer. I realized that while vegetable life was far advanced, animal life had yet to appear. Mjly was the first of this type of life ever to set foot on terrestrial soil.
But where was she? On the moon, I could often locate her a thousand miles away by a simple radio call. Although the earth was much larger than the moon, I did not doubt that she was within a thousand miles. So I generated power and issued a call.
I waited for the response. It came feebly to my antenna.
Using my sense of direction, I pushed through the vegetation in search of her. I did not levitate, because the feebleness of her call indicated she might be hurt and on the ground. Besides, levitation is much more difficult on the earth than on the moon.
The reply came stronger to my next call and I sensed through seven of my senses that she was near. She was on the ground, probably injured, which explained why she had not returned as she had promised.
I came to a patch of wilderness, a great marshy plain. In the middle of this swamp was a crater, like those caused by meteors, a deep, ugly scar in the mud. I shuddered at the thought that my darling Mjly might have landed there. Her weaker scientific sense might not have given her the cue to use her skin as a parachute and she might have made the fatal mistake of trying to reverse-levitate.
"Mjly!" I called, speaking aloud now. "Mjly! Where are you?"
"Yljm! I am here!"
Yes, the voice came from the crater. Gliding to its rim, I looked down. A pool of water lay on the bottom. A greenish scum covered the surface. The scum moved with a million tiny wriggles.
"Yes, Yljm," came Mjly's voice. "It is I. But I am no longer one being." And her voice sounded like a million tiny chirps joined together. "I landed with such force that I came apart. Now each of my body cells lives a life of its own. And now and then each cell grows fat and becomes two. I am my sisters, I ..."
Let's not be subtle about it. Mjly was a microbe, the beginning of animal life on the earth. She lives today, she is and always will be her sisters, her mothers, herselves and her ancestors. But there are few ancestors, for microbes do not die--just part of themselves die.
And I do not die. For I crept away into a hole in the ground, where I will live forever. I do not starve, for roots reach me here. But I miss my love life with Mjly. I can never be a mother or a sister. I will always be me, a lonesome old bem.
THE END
Table of Contents
OPERATION EARTHWORM by Joe Archibald
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER by Robert Andrew Arthur
LAST RESORT by Stephen Bartholomew
WHERE THERE'S HOPE, by Jerome Bixby
ZERO HOUR by Alexander Blade
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond
A PRIZE FOR EDIE by Jesse Franklin Bone
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW by Miles John Breuer
HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
HARD GUY by H. B. Carleton
THE PERFECTIONISTS by Arnold Castle
COMPETITION by James Causey
FINAL WEAPON by Everett B. Cole
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT by Ray Cummings
THE GUN by Philip K. Dick
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA by Paul Ernst
THE GIFT BEARER by Charles L. Fontenay
EXILE by H. B. Fyfe
AFTER A FEW WORDS by Randall Garrett
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK by Anthony Gilmore
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET by Tom Godwin
THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton
TOY SHOP by Harry Harrison
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by C.M. Kornbluth
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER by Roger Kuykendall
JOIN OUR GANG? by Sterling E. Lanier
DISTURBING SUN by Philip Latham
THE YILLIAN WAY by Keith Laumer
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT by William Lee
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM by Herbert Livingston
G-R-R-R...! by Robert Donald Locke
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD by Robert Donald Locke
THE BIG TOMORROW by Paul Lohrman
THE MAN FROM TIME by Frank Belknap Long
WHEN I GROW UP by Richard E. Lowe
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C.C. MacApp
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND by Stephen Marlowe
PUSHBUTTON WAR by Joseph P. Martino
REX EX MACHINA by Frederic Max
DEAREST by H. Beam Piper
SORRY: WRONG DIMENSION by Ross Rocklynne
THE SECOND VOICE by Mann Rubin
CREATURES OF VIBRATION by Harl Vincent
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY by Stanley G. Weinbaum
THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson
UNDER ARCTIC ICE by H.G. Winter
LONESOME HEARTS by Russ Winterbotham
Table of Contents
OPERATION EARTHWORM by Joe Archibald
AGGRAVATION OF ELMER by Robert Andrew Arthur
LAST RESORT by Stephen Bartholomew
WHERE THERE'S HOPE, by Jerome Bixby
LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK by Nelson Bond
A PRIZE FOR EDIE by Jesse Franklin Bone
THE EINSTEIN SEE-SAW by Miles John Breuer
HALL OF MIRRORS by Fredric Brown
WEAK ON SQUARE ROOTS by Russell Burton
THE PERFECTIONISTS by Arnold Castle
FINAL WEAPON by Everett B. Cole
BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT by Ray Cummings
MAROONED UNDER THE SEA by Paul Ernst
THE GIFT BEARER by Charles L. Fontenay
AFTER A FEW WORDS by Randall Garrett
THE BLUFF OF THE HAWK by Anthony Gilmore
CRY FROM A FAR PLANET by Tom Godwin
THE SECOND SATELLITE by Edmond Hamilton
THE ALTAR AT MIDNIGHT by C.M. Kornbluth
ALL DAY SEPTEMBER by Roger Kuykendall
JOIN OUR GANG? by Sterling E. Lanier
DISTURBING SUN by Philip Latham
THE YILLIAN WAY by Keith Laumer
ONE MARTIAN AFTERNOON by Tom Leahy
JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT by William Lee
A BOTTLE OF OLD WINE by Richard O. Lewis
DAUGHTERS OF DOOM by Herbert Livingston
G-R-R-R...! by Robert Donald Locke
NEXT DOOR, NEXT WORLD by Robert Donald Locke
THE BIG TOMORROW by Paul Lohrman
THE MAN FROM TIME by Frank Belknap Long
WHEN I GROW UP by Richard E. Lowe
AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE by C.C. MacApp
BLACK EYES AND THE DAILY GRIND by Stephen Marlowe
PUSHBUTTON WAR by Joseph P. Martino
REX EX MACHINA by Frederic Max
SORRY: WRONG DIMENSION by Ross Rocklynne
THE SECOND VOICE by Mann Rubin
CREATURES OF VIBRATION by Harl Vincent
A MARTIAN ODYSSEY by Stanley G. Weinbaum
THE LAKE OF LIGHT by Jack Williamson