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Describe the setting of the story
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Raiders of the Second Moon by Basil Wells.
Relevant chunks:
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
Question:
Describe the setting of the story
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins in thick jungle on Sekk, which we are told is a \"second moon\" which retains a \"breathable atmosphere\" around a lake surrounded by eleven jungled valleys. In this way, it is implied that Sekk is a second moon of Earth.\n\nIn the jungle, we meet Noork and a young woman named Sarna. They begin traveling together through the jungle, but soon Sarna disappears and Noork is attacked. This is our first encounter with the Misty Ones, who blend in with the jungle foliage. Noork defeats the Misty Ones and continues toward the lake and island where they make their home.\n\nNoork briefly encounters his friend Ud near the marshy lowlands that lie between the jungled valleys on Sekk and the central Lake of Uzdon, but this area is not described. When Noork reaches the central island in the lake, we encounter a non-jungle landscape for the first time. Noork finds himself in a cultivated field, and sees the shape of a huge white skull about half a mile away. After speaking with an enslaved man and learning where Sarna is being held, Noork continues toward the skull.\n\nThe skull is a dome of white stone, with black stone for eye-sockets and nose-holes. The interior contains a raised altar made of precious metals--gold, silver, and brass--and precious stones, as well as stone images of the two gods the Misty Ones worship. Below the altar is the caged area where the young women are held; Noork detects the entrance to this area by its foul odor. The room where the young women are kept is dimly lit by only two torches, very damp with pools of dirty water all around, and holds at least twenty young women. They have nothing to sit on but rotten grass mats. In contrast to the enslaved men who are out in the cultivated fields and open air, the young women are in a desperate situation indeed. They can only sit in their foul, rotting prison and wait to be sacrificed.",
"The story takes place sometime after World War II on a second moon that is obscured by the moon we know and is known as Sekk. The moon Sekk has a diameter of less than five-hundred miles and a thirty-two-hour revolution, and it has a breathable atmosphere that sustains life. Life on Sekk is concentrated within a star-shaped cavity that features a lake and eleven valleys branching out from it, all of which contain jungles. The action of the story happens in the jungle areas, the lake, a walled temple, and the cavern prison beneath it. \n",
"The story is set on Sekk, the second moon, beyond Luna and blocked from Earth’s view by Luna. Sekk is less than 500 miles in diameter and has a revolution period of 32 hours. It has a breathable atmosphere and features a star-shaped center surrounded by twelve valleys thick with jungle growth. Some trees are over forty feet tall; Noork uses these trees to surveil the area around him. Several groups live on Sekk in different villages, and there are dangerous wild animals called spotted narls. There is a mysterious group of beings, believed to be demons, called the Misty Ones because they are invisible. They live on an island in the middle of a lake and have a huge skull that represents their god, Uzdon. Female slaves are held captive in a pit beneath the skull. The story takes place after World War II, when the Allies were searching for Nazi officers to stand trial for their war crimes. Dr. Karl Von Mark is one of the Nazi officials, and he makes his way to Africa, pursued by the American Stephen Dietrich. They both fly into space and land on Sekk where Von Mark works on his scheme to return and take over the Earth, and Dietrich loses his memory and becomes known as Noork.",
"The story takes place on a small moon called Sekk, five hundred miles wide with a thirty-two-hour day. The atmosphere on Sekk supports life, which exists in rich abundance within a star-like depression in its earth. Deep in this depression is a lake surrounded by twelve vast, green valleys and jungles. The jungles are dense and covered with massive trees that look like giants. Many of these trees have sticky fruits that Noork later uses to help him see the Misty Ones. Noork paddles across the lake in order to reach the island of Manak, which is home to the Temple of Skull where the Misty Ones make their sacrifices to the gods Uzdon and Lornu. The Temple is comprised mostly of stone, and the sacrificial altar is made of brass, gold, and silver. After navigating through the Temple to find Tholon Sarna, he eventually ends up in “the pit”—a cavern dimly lit with torches and peppered with dark standing water. After their escape from the Temple, they are once again stopped by Misty Ones in a grassy inlet back on the mainland. This is where Dr. Von Mark reveals Noork’s true identity to him and is killed by Gurn and the Vasads."
] |
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Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
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Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Noork is in a tree on a moon named Sekk, watching a woman walk through the jungle. When they speak, they learn that Noork has been living with her brother, Gurn. With this introduction, they begin to travel together.\n\nThe woman explains that she had been captured by slavers in the past but had escaped. The escapees were then followed by the Misty Ones, and the woman was the only one who made a complete escape. Noork states that he will visit the island where the Misty Ones live one day, but the woman does not answer. When Noork turns back to her, she has disappeared, and Noork is attacked. He hides in the trees and spies the Misty Ones below. He throws fruit down on them until he can easily see them by the stains the fruit makes on their clothing, then attacks with arrows. The Misty Ones flee except for one who has been killed with an arrow. Noork takes the robe of this one and sets off toward the Temple of the Skull, the home of the Misty Ones, to free the woman.\n\nNoork encounters Ud, his friend, near the lake, and tells him to tell Gurn that the MIsty Ones can be trapped and skinned. He asks Ud to tell Gurn that Noork is going to save Gurn's \"father's woman woman\" called Sarna.\n\nNoork paddles across the lake and sneaks close to the Temple of the Skull. He falls asleep in a tree and is awakened by the conversation of two slaves talking about Sarna. After one slave leaves, he speaks with the other slave, Rold, and tells him that he is there to rescue Sarna. Rold, realizing that the Misty Ones are only mortal men, tells Noork that Sarna is held in a pit beneath the temple with the other young women slaves.\n\nNoork finds the entrance to the pit but is blocked by two guards, whom he kills.He then proceeds to the cage where the young women are held, where he is confronted by a priest. He fights the priest, kills him, and frees Sarna. They go back to the field, get Rold, and the three of them flee into the jungle. They plan to go for a boat and leave, but are caught by Misty Ones waiting to trap them. At this time, Dr. Von Mark, a Nazi from Earth, confronts Noork, who is also Stephen Dietrich, an American pilot who has been hunting him and had tracked him through space to Sekk. Due to Dietrich/Noork's amnesia, he remembers none of this. Just as Von Mark is about to kill him, Gurn and other men from Wari kill the Misty Ones with arrows and Noork and the others are freed. Noork states that he can now live in peace with Gurn and Sarna in the jungle.",
"Noork, a man from Earth who doesn’t remember who he is, lives in the jungle on a second moon. He knows he was brought there by what he remembers as a huge bird and that he was taken in by a man named Gurn and the Vasad people of the jungle. He meets a woman named Sarna with whom he shares a mutual attraction, and it turns out that she is Gurn’s sister. Shortly after they discover this, they are attacked. Sarna vanishes and Noork hides, eventually discovering that the “Misty Ones” who attacked them, thought to be demons, look similar to him and can be “skinned”; this is important because their skins or coverings allow the wearer to be nearly invisible like them. \n\nNoork passes a message along via another Vasad to tell Gurn what he has learned about the Misty Ones, and to say that Noork has gone to rescue Sarna. He sneaks into the walled temple where the slaves are being kept, and enlists the help of another slave, Rold, to help them get out if he can get Sarna. Noork goes down to the cavern and, after fighting a priest to the death, rescues Sarna. They escape with Rold, only to be captured by more Misty Ones, one of whom turns out to be a Nazi from Noork’s previous life. \n\nThough Noork can’t remember him (but knows he dislikes him), Doctor Von Mark remembers him. Noork’s name was Stephen Dietrich, and he was an American flier who had chased down one of the last nazi criminals: Doctor Von Mark. Von Mark had then flown one of his shuttles to Sekk and landed successfully, while Stephen had pursued him in another of his shuttles and crashed on Sekk, resulting in his amnesia. “Noork” was the name given to him by the Vasad based on the only sounds he could make: “New York”. \n\nDoctor Von Mark asks if Noork knows the secret to the invisibility of the Misty One’s skins, since this would allow him to return to Earth and take it over for the Fatherland. When he realizes that Noork knows nothing, he moves to kill him but is shot by an arrow just in time. Gurn has rallied warriors based on Noork’s message. Noork now knows his real name and that he got where he is by hunting down an evil man. He is now happy to live safely in the jungle with Gurn and Sarna, and she says she is happy, too. \n",
"Noork is a man from Earth whose real name is Stephen Dietrich; he was pursuing the Nazi Dr. Karl Von Mark, the last of the Axis criminals at large. Dietrich followed Von Mark to Africa where Von Mark took off in a spaceship, and Dietrich followed. Both landed on Sekk, a second moon past Luna, but Dietrich’s landing was so rough that he lost his memory. When the locals found him, he said, “New York,” which they didn’t understand and named him Noork. Noork lives among the Vasads and learns their language. \n\nNoork and Tholon Sarna meet in the jungle and become friends. One day as they are talking, Noork hears feet scuffing, and Tholon disappears. Noork climbs a tree to find out where the Misty Ones are (They are invisible.). He detects movement and throws overripe fruit, which stains the cloaks of the Misty Ones. Noork shoots arrows toward the creatures and kills one. He takes that one’s robe, which is what makes the Misty Ones invisible. \n\nNoork tells one of his colleagues to take the message to Gurn, their leader and Tholon’s brother, that the Misty Ones are flesh and blood, not demons as they believe. He tells Ud that he is going to the island of the Misty Ones to save Tholon. He reaches the wall surrounding the Misty Ones’ village and overhears two slaves talking before they separate. Noork approaches the slave in the field, Rold, and asks for his help in exchange for helping Rold escape. Rold explains that the large skull is the god Uzdon, and the priests make sacrifices by taking the heart out of a living slave girl. He also tells Noork that the slave girls are held in a pit beneath the skull guarded by Misty Ones.\n\nNoork moves among the Misty Ones in anonymity since he is wearing one of their robes. He enters the skull and kills the guards who are in charge of the slave girls. Just as he is about to release Tholon, a priest catches him, and they fight until Noork kills him, too. Noork takes more robes and the priest’s face shield and leaves with Tholon and Rold. The face shield enables him to see the Misty Ones who are invisible to everyone else, so he can see when they are waiting to trap them. They capture the escape party, and one of the Misty Ones reveals that he is Dr. Von Mark after recognizing Dietrich. Von Mark reveals his plans to use the cloaks of invisibility to conquer Earth and make Germany invincible. Von Mark prepares to shoot Dietrich but is shot by an arrow first. Misty Ones close in on the group and lower their hoods, revealing Tholon’s brother Gurn and his men. Noork now remembers who he is and says he will live in peace with Gurn and his sister.\n",
"Noork searches for the bird that dropped him on a cliff (as well as another bird) when he is discovered by the Vasads. He repeated the word \"New York\", and so the Vasads call him Noork. From his perch, he now watches a girl—Tholon Sarna--moving along a trail below. She is the sister of Gurn, the Vasad leader. Gurn has been exiled from their home city of Grath because he doesn't believe in the enslavement of the Zuran, and Tholon Sarna has recently evaded capture by her enemies, the men of Konto. The Misty Ones--slavers dwellling at the Temple of the Skull and feared deeply by the Vasads--follow her. As Tholon Sarna and Noork walk, she is captured by a Misty One made invisible by a special robe. A Misty One clubs Noork, injuring his arm. Thanks to their blurry outlines, Noork realizes the Misty Ones are not entirely invisible, and he uses his legs to pelt them with fruit. Upon seeing their true form--closer to his own human shape--Noork loses his fear of them and begins attacking them with arrows. He takes the invisibility robe of a fallen Misty One and uses it to disguise himself as he makes his way to the Temple of the Skull. Along the way, he reunites with his friend Ud, a jungle-dwelling beast-man. He sends Ud to inform Gurn of the Misty Ones' newfound weakness. We then learn that Noork's real name is Stephen Dietrich, and he had been hunting Dr. Karl Von Mark, a criminal scientist attempting to revivify the Nazi power structure. Von Mark manages to evade Dietrich by landing on Sekk, and Dietrich crashes and succumbs to amnesia. The bird that had carried him to the cliff was his own plane, and the bird he had been seeking was Von Mark's. Now, Noork descends upon a slave named Rold near the Temple of the Skull. He enlists Rold to help him free Tholon Sarna. Rold informs Noork of the High Priest's plan to choose a sacrifice to their god, Uzdon, from the female slaves caged in a pit beneath the Skull. Noork promises a robe to Rold if his plan to rescue Tholon Sarna succeeds. In disguise, Noork approaches the Skull, heavily guarded by Misty Ones, and makes his way toward the pit. Along the way, he defeats guards and pockets two robes. Before freeing Tholon Sarna, Noork battles the High Priest, kills him, and they make their escape. Soon after, they are again trapped by a group of Misty Ones--this time led by none other than Dr. Karl Von Mark himself. Von Mark tells Noork of his desire to use the secret of invisibility to make Germany all-powerful, and he pulls out a gun to kill him. Suddenly, Gurn emerges with the Vasads, and they kill Von Mark with arrows. Noork recalls his true identify as Captain Dietrich and looks forward to a life of peace amongst the Vasads with Tholon Sarna."
] |
63521
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Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
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Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
Question:
What is Gurn's role in the story?
Answer:
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"We first hear Gurn's name mentioned by Noork in his initial meeting with Sarna. He tells her that he has been living with the wild Vasads of the jungle with Gurn, his friend and their chief. Noork goes on to say that Gurn is an exile from the walled city of Grath and asks Sarna if she knows why this is. Sarna says that her brother says they should no longer enslave Zurans they capture from other valleys. In this way, their relationships with Gurn build a bridge between them, allowing them to consider a relationship with one another.\n\nGurn is next mentioned when Noork encounters his friend Ud near the central lake of Sekk, the moon they are on. Noork asks Ud to go to their mutual friend Gurn and pass on a message. Noork asks Ud to tell Gurn that the Misty Ones can be trapped and skinned. When Ud wonders why anyone would want to do such a thing, Noork tells him that Noork is trying to save Gurn's \"father's woman woman\", as he describes Gurn's sister Sarna.\n\nGurn then arrives as something between a hero and a deus ex machina at the very end of the story. Noork, Sarna, and Rold, an enslaved man who helped Noork free Sarna, are about to be murdered by Doctor Von Mark and the Misty Ones, when Gurn and his allies arrive and shoot the enemy full of arrows, saving all their lives. Gurn reveals that he received Ud's messages and they were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across the lake and stealing their robes so they could come to Noork's rescue. Without Gurn, Noork and Sarna would never have traveled together in the first place, nor would they have been rescued at the end.",
"Gurn is described as a renegade and the leader of the Vasad, a hairy people living in the jungle on Sekk. He is tall, strong, golden-skinned, and has proven to be a friend to Noork. He wears bracelets connected by human hair. He has been exiled from the city of Grath because he spoke out against keeping the captured people from other valleys as slaves. He is Sarna’s brother, and she seems to trust Noork more when he mentions Gurn. After he and Sarna are attacked, Noork passes a message to another Vasad, Ud, to tell Gurn that the “misty people” they fear can be killed and their skins used to conceal them, and that he’s going to save Sarna. Later, after Noork and Sarna are captured by the Nazi Doctor Von Mark, Gurn and some warriors show up just in time to save them. \n",
"Gurn is Tholon Sarna’s brother and the leader of a group of Vasads. He is tall and strong, wears a bracelet made of gold discs linked together with human hair, and talks with his own shadow when he thinks. Gurn was exiled from the city of Grath, whose leaders called him a traitor for voicing his opinion that they should not make their captured Zurans slaves. When Noork leaves to rescue Tholon from the Misty Ones, he sends word to Gurn via Ud that the Misty Ones are not demons but flesh and bone beings who can be trapped and skinned and that he is going to rescue Gurn’s sister from the Misty Ones. At the end of the story, when Von Mark and his men have captured Noork, Tholon, and Rold, Gurn and his men arrive and pelt the Waris with arrows to rescue Noork and the others. Gurn and his men had been trapping Misty Ones on their way to the Misty Ones’ city of Uzdon to rescue Noork when they came across Von Mark and the Waris holding Noork and the others. ",
"Gurn is the golden-skinned leader of the Vasads and Tholon Sarna’s brother. Gurn discovers Noork when he first lands on Sekk and reminds him that he has not always lived in the valleys of the moon. As leader of the Vasads, Gurn has been exiled from his home city of Grath for speaking out against the enslavement of the people of Zura. Gurn and the Vasads fear the Misty Ones that make sacrifices to Uzdon at the Temple of the Skull, believing they are gods or demons. When Noork discovers the Misty Ones can be shed of their invisibility, he sends his friend Ud to inform Gurn. Upon hearing this news, Gurn brings the Vasads to rescue his sister, Tholon Sarna, and they arrive just in time to prevent Dr. Von Mark from killing Noork. Instead, Gurn kills Dr. Von Mark by shooting him with arrows, and Noork decides to live in peace with him, the Vasads, and Tholon Sarna."
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Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
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Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
Question:
What is the significance of enslavement in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Enslavement and freedom as themes run throughout the story. When Noork and Sarna first meet each other in the opening scene, one of the ways they decide to trust one another is because of their mutual relationships with Gurn, a third character. Gurn has been exiled from the city of Grath because he says that his people should no longer enslave the captured Zurans from other valleys of Sekk. In the next scene, we learn that Sarna, Gurn's sister, was kidnapped by one group of slavers, escaped them with four others, and only narrowly escaped capture by a second group of slavers, the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull, who captured the other four of her group. Noork tells her that one day he will visit the island of Misty Ones who took her friends. At this time, he realizes that Sarna has disappeared, and he is attacked by the Misty Ones, though he is able to fight them off.\n\nDuring Noork's travels to the island of the Misty Ones, we learn his backstory: he is American pilot Stephen Dietrich, and he arrived on the moon of Sekk by following Doctor Karl Von Mark, last of the Nazi criminals at large. Dietrich's ship had crashed on Sekk, robbing him of his memory. In the conflict between the Allies and Nazis, we again see the conflict between enslavement and freedom: the Nazis forced those they considered racially \"impure\" into prison camps where they were either murdered outright or forced to engage in labor under inhumane conditions until they died; the Allied forces were a hope of freedom for these imprisoned, enslaved people.\n\nNoork spies on enslaved men in the fields outside the temple of the Misty Ones and hears them gossiping about Sarna. The older man suggests that their life is not so bad, but the younger man protests and states that one day he plans to escape. Noork approaches the younger man to find out where Sarna is being held and promises to take him along when he and Sarna escape. Noork then fights off multiple guards and a priest in order to free Sarna from the pit where she is held, which is dank and full of rotting grass mats and little light.\n\nWhile the story touches on themes of enslavement and freedom, it does not engage with them fully. The dungeon where the enslaved young women is held is described in foul terms, but Noork does not seem to free all the young women from their prison. That may happen as a result of Gurn's final attack on Doctor Von Mark and the Misty Ones, but Noork escapes only with Sarna and Rold. Rold is unhappy with being enslaved, not because he is being harmed or others are, but because he is not free to mate with attractive young women like Sarna. While the story should not need to spell out every reason why enslavement is wrong, it takes a very superficial approach to a deeply painful issue.",
"Enslavement is a major theme throughout the story. Gurn has been exiled for speaking out against the slavery that his people have inflicted on others, which is how he a Noork find one another. Noork’s travels during the action of the story are undertaken in an effort to save Sarna, who has now been enslaved twice. The person he enlists to help him, Rold, is also a slave. When Doctor Von Mark and the Misty Ones ambush Noork and the doctor recognizes him as Stephen Dietrich, he mentions that the trapper has now become the trapped. A moment later, Gurn and the other warriors free Noork from the doctor’s enslavement. Most of the story involves various people being enslaved or feeling a certain way about enslavement, and the element of Nazism in the story also lends it a broader theme of the enslavement that that regime inflicted and tried to inflict, and the continued possession of the Earth that Von Mark is working toward. \n",
"Enslavement seems to be the preferred way to deal with enemies on Sekk, and when Gurn speaks out against enslaving their Zuran captives, the city rulers label him a traitor and exile him from the city. His sister, Tholon, was captured by slavers but managed to escape with four others. However, when they passed near the Lake of Uzdon, the Misty Ones captured her four fellow escapees. And while Tholon is telling her story to Noork, she is kidnapped by the Misty Ones and spirited away to their city of Uzdon. The Misty Ones offer beautiful slave girls chosen by their priests as sacrifices to their god Uzdon, binding them to the altar and removing their hearts while still alive. The Misty Ones also enslave others to be workers. Slaves work in their cultivated fields and gardens, and in the skull, slaves are chained together with heavy chains. ",
"Enslavement is an important topic in the story as many of the Zuran peoples are enslaved by various groups. The men of Kanto are enemies of the Vasads and the people of Grath, but the city of Grath also enslaves people. When Gurn speaks out against the practice, he is exiled from Grath and becomes transient with his group of Vasads. When Noork first meets Tholon Sarna, she has fled her initial enslavement, narrowly avoided enslavement by the men of Kanto, and is then captured by the Misty Ones, who also have slaves working on the island of Manak. Noork frees Rold from his enslavement, and enlists his help to prevent Tholon Sarna from becoming a human sacrifice to Uzdon. When the Vasads defeat the Misty Ones and Dr. Von Mark, they are free to live in their own society without the constraints of slavery."
] |
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Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Raiders of the Second Moon
By GENE ELLERMAN
A strange destiny had erased Noork's memory,
and had brought him to this tiny world—to
write an end to his first existence.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Summer 1945.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Beyond earth swings that airless pocked mass of fused rock and gray
volcanic dust that we know as Luna. Of this our naked eyes assure us.
But of the smaller satellite, hidden forever from the mundane view by
Luna's bulk, we know little.
Small is Sekk, that second moon, less than five hundred miles in
diameter, but the period of its revolution is thirty two hours, and its
meaner mass retains a breathable atmosphere. There is life on Sekk,
life that centers around the sunken star-shaped cavity where an oval
lake gleams softly in the depths. And the eleven radiating tips of the
starry abyss are valleys green with jungle growth.
In one of those green valleys the white savage that the Vasads called
Noork squatted in the ample crotch of a jungle giant and watched the
trail forty feet below. For down there moved alertly a golden skinned
girl, her only weapons a puny polished bow of yellow wood and a
sheathed dagger.
Sight of the girl's flowing brown hair and the graceful feminine
contours of her smooth-limbed body beneath its skin-halter and the
insignificant breech-clout, made his brow wrinkle with concentration.
Not forever had he lived in this jungle world of valleys and ragged
cliffs. Since he had learned the tongue of the hairy Vasads of forest,
and the tongue of their gold-skinned leader, Gurn, the renegade, he had
confirmed that belief.
For a huge gleaming bird had carried him in its talons to the top of
the cliff above their valley and from the rock fire had risen to devour
the great bird. Somehow he had been flung clear and escaped the death
of the mysterious bird-thing. And in his delirium he had babbled the
words that caused the apish Vasads to name him Noork. Now he repeated
them aloud.
"New York," he said, "good ol' New York."
The girl heard. She looked upward fearfully, her rounded bare arm going
back to the bow slung across her shoulder. Swiftly she fitted an arrow
and stepped back against the friendly bole of a shaggy barked jungle
giant. Noork grinned.
"Tako, woman," he greeted her.
"Tako," she replied fearfully. "Who speaks to Tholon Sarna? Be you
hunter or escaped slave?"
"A friend," said Noork simply. "It was I who killed the spotted
narl
last night when it attacked you."
Doubtfully the girl put away her bow. Her fingers, however, were never
far from the hilt of her hunting dagger.
Noork swung outward from his perch, and then downward along the ladder
of limbs to her side. The girl exclaimed at his brown skin.
"Your hair is the color of the sun!" she said. "Your garb is Vasad, yet
you speak the language of the true men." Her violet oddly slanting eyes
opened yet wider. "Who are you?"
"I am Noork," the man told her. "For many days have I dwelt among the
wild Vasads of the jungle with their golden-skinned chief, Gurn, for
my friend."
The girl impulsively took a step nearer. "Gurn!" she cried. "Is he tall
and strong? Has he a bracelet of golden discs linked together with
human hair? Does he talk with his own shadow when he thinks?"
"That is Gurn," admitted Noork shortly. "He is also an exile from the
walled city of Grath. The city rulers call him a traitor. He has told
me the reason. Perhaps you know it as well?"
"Indeed I do," cried Sarna. "My brother said that we should no longer
make slaves of the captured Zurans from the other valleys."
Noork smiled. "I am glad he is your brother," he said simply.
The girl's eyes fell before his admiring gaze and warm blood flooded
into her rounded neck and lovely cheeks.
"Brown-skinned one!" she cried with a stamp of her shapely little
sandalled foot. "I am displeased with the noises of your tongue. I will
listen to it no more."
But her eyes gave the provocative lie to her words. This brown-skinned
giant with the sunlit hair was very attractive....
The girl was still talking much later, as they walked together along
the game-trail. "When my captors were but one day's march from their
foul city of Bis the warriors of the city of Konto, through whose
fertile valley we had journeyed by night, fell upon the slavers.
"And in the confusion of the attack five of us escaped. We returned
toward the valley of Grath, but to avoid the intervening valley where
our enemies, the men of Konto, lived, we swung close to the Lake of
Uzdon. And the Misty Ones from the Temple of the Skull trailed us. I
alone escaped."
Noork lifted the short, broad-bladed sword that swung in its sheath
at his belt and let it drop back into place with a satisfying whisper
of flexible leather on steel. He looked toward the east where lay the
mysterious long lake of the Misty Ones.
"Some day," he said reflectively, "I am going to visit the island of
the unseen evil beings who stole away your friends. Perhaps after I
have taken you to your brother's hidden village, and from there to
your city of Grath...." He smiled.
The girl did not answer. His keen ears, now that he was no longer
speaking, caught the scuffing of feet into the jungle behind him. He
turned quickly to find the girl had vanished, and with an instinctive
reflex of motion he flung himself to one side into the dense wall of
the jungle. As it was the unseen club thudded down along his right arm,
numbing it so he felt nothing for some time.
One armed as he was temporarily, and with an unseen foe to reckon with,
Noork awkwardly swung up into the comparative safety of the trees. Once
there, perched in the crotch of a mighty jungle monarch, he peered down
at the apparently empty stretch of sunken trail beneath.
Noork
At first he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Apparently there was no
stir of life along that leaf-shadowed way. And then he caught a glimpse
of blurring shadowy shapes, blotches of cottony mist that blended all
too well with the foliage. One of the things from the island in the
Lake of Uzdon moved, and he saw briefly the bottom of a foot dirtied
with the mud of the trail.
Noork squinted. So the Misty Ones were not entirely invisible. Pain
was growing in his numbed arm now, but as it came so came strength. He
climbed further out on the great branch to where sticky and overripe
fruit hung heavy. With a grin he locked his legs upon the forking of
the great limb and filled his arms with fruit.
A barrage of the juicy fruit blanketed the misty shapes. Stains spread
and grew. Patchy outlines took on a new color and sharpness. Noork
found that he was pelting a half-dozen hooded and robed creatures whose
arms and legs numbered the same as his own, and the last remnant of
superstitious fear instilled in his bruised brain by the shaggy Vasads
vanished.
These Misty Ones were living breathing creatures like himself! They
were not gods, or demons, or even the ghostly servants of demons. He
strung his bow quickly, the short powerful bow that Gurn had given him,
and rained arrows down upon the cowering robed creatures.
And the monsters fled. They fled down the trail or faded away into the
jungle. All but one of them. The arrow had pierced a vital portion of
this Misty One's body. He fell and moved no more.
A moment later Noork was ripping the stained cloak and hood from the
fallen creature, curious to learn what ghastly brute-thing hid beneath
them. His lip curled at what he saw.
The Misty One was almost like himself. His skin was not so golden as
that of the other men of Zuran, and his forehead was low and retreating
in a bestial fashion. Upon his body there was more hair, and his face
was made hideous with swollen colored scars that formed an irregular
design. He wore a sleeveless tunic of light green and his only weapons
were two long knives and a club.
"So," said Noork, "the men of the island prey upon their own kind. And
the Temple of Uzdon in the lake is guarded by cowardly warriors like
this."
Noork shrugged his shoulders and set off at a mile-devouring pace down
the game trail toward the lake where the Temple of the Skull and its
unseen guardians lay. Once he stopped at a leaf-choked pool to wash the
stains from the dead man's foggy robe.
The jungle was thinning out. Noork's teeth flashed as he lifted the
drying fabric of the mantle and donned it.
Ud tasted the scent of a man and sluggishly rolled his bullet head from
shoulder to shoulder as he tried to catch sight of his ages-old enemy.
For between the hairy quarter-ton beast men of the jungles of Sekk and
the golden men of the valley cities who enslaved them there was eternal
war.
A growl rumbled deep in the hairy half-man's chest. He could see no
enemy and yet the scent grew stronger with every breath.
"You hunt too near the lake," called a voice. "The demons of the water
will trap you."
Ud's great nostrils quivered. He tasted the odor of a friend mingled
with that of a strange Zuran. He squatted.
"It's Noork," he grunted. "Why do I not see you?"
"I have stolen the skin of a demon," answered the invisible man. "Go to
Gurn. Tell him to fear the demons no longer. Tell him the Misty Ones
can be trapped and skinned."
"Why you want their skins?" Ud scratched his hairy gray skull.
"Go to save Gurn's ..." and here Noork was stumped for words. "To save
his father's woman woman," he managed at last. "Father's woman woman
called Sarna."
And the misty blob of nothingness was gone again, its goal now the
marshy lowlands that extended upward perhaps a thousand feet from the
jungle's ragged fringe to end at last in the muddy shallows of the Lake
of Uzdon.
To Noork it seemed that all the world must be like these savage jungle
fastnesses of the twelve valleys and their central lake. He knew that
the giant bird had carried him from some other place that his battered
brain could not remember, but to him it seemed incredible that men
could live elsewhere than in a jungle valley.
But Noork was wrong. The giant bird that he had ridden into the depths
of Sekk's fertile valleys had come from a far different world. And the
other bird, for which Noork had been searching when he came upon the
golden-skinned girl, was from another world also.
The other bird had come from space several days before that of Noork,
the Vasads had told him, and it had landed somewhere within the land
of sunken valleys. Perhaps, thought Noork, the bird had come from the
same valley that had once been his home. He would find the bird and
perhaps then he could remember better who he had been.
So it was, ironically enough, that Stephen Dietrich—whose memory was
gone completely—again took up the trail of Doctor Karl Von Mark, last
of the Axis criminals at large. The trail that had led the red-haired
young American flier from rebuilding Greece into Africa and the hidden
valley where Doctor Von Mark worked feverishly to restore the crumbled
structure of Nazidom, and then had sent him hurtling spaceward in the
second of the Doctor's crude space-ships was now drawing to an end.
The Doctor and the young American pilot were both trapped here on this
little blob of cosmic matter that hides beyond the Moon's cratered bulk.
The Doctor's ship had landed safely on Sekk, the wily scientist
preferring the lesser gravity of this fertile world to that of the
lifeless Moon in the event that he returned again to Earth, but
Dietrich's spacer had crashed.
Two words linked Noork with the past, the two words that the Vasads
had slurred into his name: New York. And the battered wrist watch, its
crystal and hands gone, were all that remained of his Earthly garb.
Noork paddled the long flat dugout strongly away from the twilight
shore toward the shadowy loom of the central island. Though he could
not remember ever having held a paddle before he handled the ungainly
blade well.
After a time the clumsy prow of the craft rammed into a yielding
cushion of mud, and Noork pulled the dugout out of the water into the
roofing shelter of a clump of drooping trees growing at the water's
edge.
Sword in hand he pushed inward from the shore and ended with a
smothered exclamation against an unseen wall. Trees grew close up to
the wall and a moment later he had climbed out along a horizontal
branch beyond the wall's top, and was lowering his body with the aid of
a braided leather rope to the ground beyond.
He was in a cultivated field his feet and hands told him. And perhaps
half a mile away, faintly illumined by torches and red clots of
bonfires, towered a huge weathered white skull!
Secure in the knowledge that he wore the invisible robes of a Misty
One he found a solitary tree growing within the wall and climbed to a
comfortable crotch. In less than a minute he was asleep.
"The new slave," a rough voice cut across his slumber abruptly, "is the
daughter of Tholon Dist the merchant."
Noork was fully awake now. They were speaking of Sarna. Her father's
name was Tholon Dist. It was early morning in the fields of the Misty
Ones and he could see the two golden-skinned slaves who talked together
beneath his tree.
"That matters not to the priests of Uzdon," the slighter of the
two slaves, his hair almost white, said. "If she be chosen for the
sacrifice to great Uzdon her blood will stain the altar no redder than
another's."
"But it is always the youngest and most beautiful," complained the
younger slave, "that the priests chose. I wish to mate with a beautiful
woman. Tholon Sarna is such a one."
The old man chuckled dryly. "If your wife be plain," he said, "neither
master nor fellow slave will steal her love. A slave should choose a
good woman—and ugly, my son."
"Some night," snarled the slave, "I'm going over the wall. Even the
Misty Ones will not catch me once I have crossed the lake."
"Silence," hissed the white-haired man. "Such talk is madness. We are
safe here from wild animals. There are no spotted narls on the island
of Manak. The priests of most holy Uzdon, and their invisible minions,
are not unkind.
"Get at your weeding of the field, Rold," he finished, "and I will
complete my checking of the gardens."
Noork waited until the old man was gone before he descended from the
tree. He walked along the row until he reached the slave's bent back,
and he knew by the sudden tightening of the man's shoulder muscles
that his presence was known. He looked down and saw that his feet made
clear-cut depressions in the soft rich soil of the field.
"Continue to work," he said to the young man. "Do not be too surprised
at what I am about to tell you, Rold." He paused and watched the golden
man's rather stupid face intently.
"I am not a Misty One," Noork said. "I killed the owner of this strange
garment I wear yesterday on the mainland. I have come to rescue the
girl, Tholon Sarna, of whom you spoke."
Rold's mouth hung open but his hard blunt fingers continued to work.
"The Misty Ones, then," he said slowly, "are not immortal demons!" He
nodded his long-haired head. "They are but men. They too can die."
"If you will help me, Rold," said Noork, "to rescue the girl and escape
from the island I will take you along."
Rold was slow in answering. He had been born on the island and yet his
people were from the valley city of Konto. He knew that they would
welcome the news that the Misty Ones were not demons. And the girl from
the enemy city of Grath was beautiful. Perhaps she would love him for
helping to rescue her and come willingly with him to Konto.
"I will help you, stranger," he agreed.
"Then tell me of the Skull, and of the priests, and of the prison where
Tholon Sarna is held."
The slave's fingers flew. "All the young female slaves are caged
together in the pit beneath the Skull. When the sun is directly
overhead the High Priest will choose one of them for sacrifice to
mighty Uzdon, most potent of all gods. And with the dawning of the
next day the chosen one will be bound across the altar before great
Uzdon's image and her heart torn from her living breast." The slave's
mismatched eyes, one blue and the other brown, lifted from his work.
"Tholon Sarna is in the pit beneath the Temple with the other female
slaves. And the Misty Ones stand guard over the entrance to the temple
pits."
"It is enough," said Noork. "I will go to rescue her now. Be prepared
to join us as we return. I will have a robe for you if all goes well."
"If you are captured," cried Rold nervously, "you will not tell them I
talked with you?"
Noork laughed. "You never saw me," he told the slave.
The skull was a gigantic dome of shaped white stone. Where the
eye-sockets and gaping nose-hole should have been, black squares of
rock gave the illusion of vacancy. Slitted apertures that served for
windows circled the grisly whiteness of the temple's curving walls at
three distinct levels.
Noork drifted slowly up the huge series of long bench-like steps
that led up to the gaping jaws of the Skull. He saw red and
purple-robed priests with nodding head-dresses of painted plumes and
feathers climbing and descending the stairs. Among them moved the
squatty gnarled shapes of burdened Vasads, their shaggy bowed legs
fettered together with heavy copper or bronze chains, and cringing
golden-skinned slaves slipped furtively through the press of the
brilliant-robed ones. The stale sweaty odor of the slaves and the beast
men mingled with the musky stench of the incense from the temple.
Other misty blobs, the invisible guards of the ghastly temple, were
stationed at regular intervals across the great entrance into the
Skull's interior, but they paid Noork no heed. To them he was another
of their number.
He moved swiftly to cross the wide stone-slabbed entry within the
jaws, and a moment later was looking down into a sunken bowl whose
rocky floor was a score of feet below where he stood. Now he saw the
central raised altar where the gleam of precious stones and cunningly
worked metal—gold, silver and brass—vied with the faded garish
colors of the draperies beneath it. And on the same dais there loomed
two beast-headed stone images, the lion-headed god a male and the
wolf-headed shape a female.
These then were the two blood hungry deities that the men of Zura
worshipped—mighty Uzdon and his mate, Lornu!
Noork joined the descending throng that walked slowly down the central
ramp toward the altar. As he searched for the entrance to the lower
pits his eyes took in the stone steps that led upward into the two
upper levels. Only priests and the vague shapelessness of the Misty
Ones climbed those steps. The upper levels, then, were forbidden to
the slaves and common citizens of the island.
As he circled the curving inner wall a foul dank odor reached his
sensitive nostrils, and his eyes searched for its origin. He found it
there just before him, the opening that gave way to a descending flight
of clammy stone steps. He darted toward the door and from nowhere two
short swords rose to bar his way.
"None are to pass save the priests," spoke a voice from nowhere
gruffly. "The High Priest knows that we of the temple guards covet the
most beautiful of the slave women, but we are not to see them until the
sacrifice is chosen."
Noork moved backward a pace. He grumbled something inaudible and drew
his sword. Before him the two swords slowly drew aside.
In that instant Noork attacked. His keen sword, whetted to razor
sharpness on abrasive bits of rock, bit through the hidden neck and
shoulder of the guard on his right hand, and with the same forward
impetus of attack he smashed into the body of the startled guard on his
left.
His sword had wrenched from his hand as it jammed into the bony
structure of the decapitated Misty One's shoulder, and now both his
hands sought the throat of the guard. The unseen man's cry of warning
gurgled and died in his throat as Noork clamped his fingers shut upon
it, and his shortened sword stabbed at Noork's back.
The struggle overbalanced them. They rolled over and over down the
shadowy stair, the stone smashing at their softer flesh unmercifully.
For a moment the battling men brought up with a jolt as the obstruction
of the first guard's corpse arrested their downward course, and then
they jolted and jarred onward again from blood-slippery step to
blood-slippery step.
The sword clattered from the guardian Misty One's clutch and in the
same instant Noork's steel fingers snapped the neck of the other man
with a pistol-like report. The limp body beneath him struggled no more.
He sprang to his feet and became aware of a torch-lighted doorway but a
half-dozen paces further down along the descending shaft of steps.
In a moment, he thought, the fellows of this guard would come charging
out, swords in hand. They could not have failed to hear the struggle
on the stairs of stone, he reasoned, for here the noise and confusion
of the upper temple was muted to a murmur.
So it was that he ran quickly to the door, in his hand the sword that
had dropped from the dead man's fingers, and sprang inside, prepared to
battle there the Misty Ones, lest one escape to give the alarm.
He looked about the narrow stone-walled room with puzzled eyes. Two
warriors lay on a pallet of straw, one of them emitting hideous
gurgling sounds that filled the little room with unpleasing echoes.
Noork grinned.
From the floor beside the fatter of the two men, the guard who did not
snore, he took a club. Twice he struck and the gurgling sound changed
to a steady deep breathing. Noork knew that now the two guards would
not give the alarm for several hours. Thoughtfully he looked about the
room. There were several of the hooded cloaks hanging from pegs wedged
into the crevices of the chamber's wall, their outlines much plainer
here in the artificial light of the flickering torch.
Noork shed his own blood-stained robe quickly and donned one of the
others. The cloaks were rather bulky and so he could carry but two
others, rolled up, beneath his own protective covering.
The matter of his disguise thus taken care of he dragged the two bodies
from the stairway and hid them beneath their own fouled robes in the
chamber of the sleeping guards. Not until then did he hurry on down the
stone steps toward the prison pit where Tholon Sarna, the golden girl,
was held prisoner.
The steps opened into a dimly lit cavern. Pools of foul black water
dotted the uneven floor and reflected back faintly the light of the two
sputtering torches beside the entrance. One corner of the cavern was
walled off, save for a narrow door of interlocking brass strips, and
toward this Noork made his way.
He stood beside the door. "Sarna," he called softly, "Tholon Sarna."
There were a score of young women, lately captured from the mainland
by the Misty Ones, sitting dejectedly upon the foul dampness of the
rotting grass that was their bed. Most of them were clad in the simple
skirt and brief jacket, reaching but to the lower ribs, that is the
mark of the golden people who dwell in the city-states of Zura's
valleys, but a few wore a simple band of cloth about their hips and
confined their breasts with a strip of well-cured leopard or antelope
hide.
One of the women now came to her feet and as she neared the
metal-barred entrance Noork saw that she was indeed Sarna. He examined
the outer lock of the door and found it to be barred with a massive
timber and the timber locked in place with a metal spike slipped into a
prepared cavity in the prison's rocky wall.
"It is Noork," he said softly as she came closer. He saw her eyes go
wide with fear and sudden hope, and then reached for the spike.
"The priest," hissed the girl.
Noork had already heard the sound of approaching feet. He dropped the
spike and whirled. His sword was in his hand as though by magic, as he
faced the burly priest of the Skull.
Across the forehead and upper half of the priest's face a curved shield
of transparent tinted material was fastened. Noork's eyes narrowed as
he saw the sword and shield of the gigantic holy man.
"So," he said, "to the priests of Uzdon we are not invisible. You do
not trust your guards, then."
The priest laughed. "We also have robes of invisibility," he said, "and
the sacred window of Uzdon before our eyes." He snarled suddenly at the
silent figure of the white man. "Down on your knees, guard, and show me
your face before I kill you!"
Noork raised his sword. "Take my hood off if you dare, priest," he
offered.
The burly priest's answer was a bellow of rage and a lunge forward of
his sword arm. Their swords clicked together and slid apart with the
velvety smoothness of bronze on bronze. Noork's blade bit a chunk from
the priest's conical shield, and in return received a slashing cut that
drew blood from left shoulder to elbow.
The fighting grew more furious as the priest pressed the attack. He
was a skilled swordsman and only the superior agility of the white
man's legs kept Noork away from that darting priestly blade. Even so
his robe was slashed in a dozen places and blood reddened his bronzed
body. Once he slipped in a puddle of foul cavern water and only by the
slightest of margins did he escape death by the priest's weapon.
The priest was tiring rapidly, however. The soft living of the temple,
and the rich wines and over-cooked meats that served to pad his paunch
so well with fat, now served to rob him of breath. He opened his
mouth to bawl for assistance from the guard, although it is doubtful
whether any sound could have penetrated up into the madhouse of the
main temple's floor, and in that instant Noork flipped his sword at his
enemy.
Between the shield and the transparent bit of curving material the
sword drove, and buried itself deep in the priest's thick neck. Noork
leaped forward; he snatched the tinted face shield and his sword, and a
moment later he had torn the great wooden timber from its sockets.
Tholon Sarna stumbled through the door and he caught her in his arms.
Hurriedly he loosed one of the two robes fastened about his waist and
slipped it around her slim shivering shoulders.
"Are there other priests hidden here in the pits?" Noork asked tensely.
"No," came the girl's low voice, "I do not think so. I did not know
that this priest was here until he appeared behind you." A slow smile
crossed Noork's hidden features. "His robe must be close by," he told
the girl. "He must have been stationed here because the priests feared
the guards might spirit away some of the prisoners."
Slowly he angled back and forth across the floor until his foot touched
the soft material of the priest's discarded robe near the stairway
entrance. He slipped the thongs of the transparent mask, called by the
priest "Uzdon's window" over his hood, and then proceeded to don the
new robe.
"My own robe is slit in a dozen places," he explained to the girl's
curious violet eyes—-all that was visible through the narrow vision
slot of her hood. He finished adjusting the outer robe and took the
girl's hand.
"Come," he said, "let us escape over the wall before the alarm is
given."
Without incident they reached the field where Rold toiled among the
rows of vegetables. Another slave was working in a nearby field,
his crude wooden plow pulled by two sweating Vasads, but he was not
watching when Rold abruptly faded from view.
Noork was sweating with the weight of two cloaks and the airlessness of
the vision shield as they crossed the field toward his rope, but he had
no wish to discard them yet. The tinted shield had revealed that dozens
of the Misty Ones were stationed about the wall to guard against the
escape of the slaves.
They came to the wall and to Noork's great joy found the rope hanging
as he had left it. He climbed the wall first and then with Rold helping
from below, drew Sarna to his side. A moment later saw the three of
them climbing along the limb to the bole of the tree and so to the
jungle matted ground outside the wall.
"Will we hide here in the trees until night?" asked the girl's full
voice.
Noork held aside a mossy creeper until the girl had passed. "I think
not," he said. "The Misty Ones are continually passing from the island
to the shore. We are Misty Ones to any that watch from the wall. So we
will paddle boldly across the water."
"That is good," agreed the slave, "unless they see us put out from the
shore. Their two landing stages are further along the beach, opposite
the Temple of Uzdon."
"Then we must hug to the shore until we pass the tip of the island,"
said Noork thoughtfully. "In that way even if they detect us we will
have put a safe distance between us."
Shortly after midday Noork felt the oozy slime of the marshy lowlands
of the mainland beneath his paddle and the dugout ran ashore in the
grassy inlet for which they had been heading. His palms were blistered
and the heavy robes he yet wore were soaked with sweat.
"Once we reach the jungle," he told the girl, "off come these robes. I
am broiled alive."
Suddenly Noork froze in his tracks. He thrust the girl behind him.
"Misty Ones!" he hissed to Rold. "They crouch among the reeds. They
carry nets and clubs to trap us."
Rold turned back toward the boat with Noork and Sarna close at his
heels. But the Misty Ones were upon them and by sheer numbers they bore
them to the ground. Noork's mightier muscles smashed more than one
hooded face but in the end he too lay smothered beneath the nets and
bodies of the enemy.
A misty shape came to stand beside these three new captives as they
were stripped of their robes. His foot nudged at Noork's head curiously
and a guttural voice commanded the shield be removed. Then his voice
changed—thickened—as he saw the features of Noork.
"So," he barked in a tongue that should have been strange to Noork but
was not, "it is the trapper's turn to be trapped, eh Captain Dietrich?"
A fat, square-jawed face, harsh lines paralleling the ugly blob of a
nose, showed through the opened robe of the leader. The face was that
of Doctor Von Mark the treacherous Nazi scientist that Stephen Dietrich
had trailed across space to Sekk! But Noork knew nothing of that chase.
The man's face seemed familiar, and hateful, but that was all he
remembered.
"I see you have come from the island," said the Doctor. "Perhaps you
can tell me the secret of this invisible material I wear. With the
secret of invisibility I, Karl Von Mark, can again conquer Earth and
make the Fatherland invincible."
"I do not understand too well," said Noork hesitantly. "Are we enemies?
There is so much I have forgotten." He regarded the brutal face
thoughtfully.
"Perhaps you know from what valley the great bird brought me," he said.
"Or perhaps the other bird brought you here."
Von Mark's blue eyes widened and then he roared with a great noise
that was intended to be mirth. His foot slammed harder into Noork's
defenseless ribs.
"Perhaps you have forgotten, swine of an American," he roared suddenly,
and in his hand was an ugly looking automatic. He flung back his robe
and Noork saw the dress uniform of a general. "Perhaps," the scientist
repeated, "but I will take no chances. The amnesia is often but a
pretense."
His lip curled. "This is something for you to remember, Captain
Dietrich," he said as the ugly black muzzle of the gun centered on
Noork's bronzed chest.
And then Doctor Von Mark cursed as the gun dropped from his nerveless
fingers and his hands clawed weakly at the arrow buried in his wide
belly. He stumbled backward.
Arrows rained from the mistiness that had closed in about Von Mark and
his men. The men from Wari, their faces unshielded, fell like flies.
In a moment those yet alive had taken to their heels, and Noork felt
invisible fingers tearing at the nets that bound him.
As he rose to his feet the robed figure let its misty covering drop
aside. A handsome golden-skinned warrior stood revealed.
"Gurn!" cried Noork.
A glad cry came from the throat of Tholon Sarna as she saw her brother.
And then she crept closer to Noork's side as the invisible mantles
of Gurn's loyal Vasads opened to reveal the hairy beast men they
concealed. Rold whimpered fearfully.
"The message that Ud carried to me was good," laughed Gurn. "The Misty
Ones skin easily. We were trapping the Misty Ones as they came across
the lake," he looked at the dying Von Mark, "as were these others. Soon
we would have come to your rescue, Noork, my friend."
"Lucky I escaped first," Noork told him. "The priests of Uzdon would
have trapped you. To them the Misty Ones are visible."
He picked up the fallen vision shield that lay beside their feet. His
chest expanded proudly.
"No longer," he told Gurn, "am I a man without a name. I am Captain
Dietrich from a distant valley called America. I was hunting this evil
man when my bird died."
He smiled and his brown arm tightened around Sarna's golden body. "The
evil man is dead. My native valley is safe. Now I can live in peace
with you, Gurn, and with your sister, here in the jungle."
"It is good, Noork," smiled Tholon Sarna.
End of Project Gutenberg's Raiders of the Second Moon, by Gene Ellerman
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Galactic Ghost by Walter Kubilius.
Relevant chunks:
GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"John Willard and Larry Dobbin are astronauts who have been in space for four years on the rocket Mary Lou, and as Dobbin is dying, he regrets that he will not see Earth again. Willard assures him that they will make it back, but he knows that they will never make it back because their ship was damaged by a meteor. Although the ship can still carry out functions to support life, it is not navigable. After Willard helps Dobbin look at the stars one more time, Dobbin cries out that it’s true—when an astronaut is dying, the Ghost Ship comes for him. \n\nWillard recycles Dobbin’s body but feels regretful about it. He longs to see the Earth again and walk on it, but he knows this will never happen and feels intensely lonely. After two years, a strange thing happens. Willard is looking at the stars, and it seems that they are winking at him. Something seems to be moving toward him, and it turns out to be an ancient ship. Willard’s gauges do not register the ship’s presence although he sees it with his own eyes, and Willard realizes that it is the Ghost Ship coming for him. Strangely enough, however, the ship turns away and moves away from him.\n\nSeven years later, a newspaper on Earth publishes a story that Willard’s son, J. Willard II, plans to build a larger version of his father’s ship, the Mary Lou II, in memory of his father, but Willard Sr. is unaware of this. He continues to experience excruciating loneliness and dreams about his life on Earth—the people he knew, the sounds, and the cities. One day a giant rocket ship comes alongside the Mary Lou, and Willard is thrilled that he has been discovered. But the vessel turns away and leaves. Willard notices that he can see starlight through the ship and realizes it is the Ghost Ship. \n\nOne day he sees another ship and, at first, fears the Ghost Ship has returned. The new ship looks solid, though, and it contacts him, addressing the Mary Lou by name. Willard believes that this ship will take him back to Earth and eagerly boards it. Willard is kept drugged for a while but eventually is alert enough to speak with the captain. When Willard asks when they will return to Earth, the captain explains that they cannot return because matter in space loses its mass and energy until nothing is left. If they tried to return to Earth, they would pass through it. Willard then realizes he is on the Ghost Ship, and he is one of its Ghosts. \n\n",
"Galactic Ghost begins with death. John Willard is taking care of his co-pilot and best friend, Larry Dobbin as he dies. A meteor struck their rocket ship, the Mary Lou, and damaged both her and Dobbin. As Dobbin dies, Willard gently takes care of him and lifts him up to the port so he can see the stars one last time. Just before he passes, Dobbin cries out and says he saw the infamous ghost ship. It steals dying spacemen who have no hope of returning to Earth, cursing them to spend the rest of their lives as ghosts in space. \nAfter Dobbin passes, Willard watches over him for two days before removing his body and turning it into energy for the useless engine in the Mary Lou. Although the ship is livable, it is not flyable. Taking careful diligence to check every part of the ship, Willard manages to keep the Mary Lou from completely shutting down. He transforms waste into food and learns to survive. \nTwo years of great loneliness and despair pass. As Willard looks out the port, he sees blinking stars. Excited, he investigates and realizes that it was an old-fashioned spaceship from decades ago. He soon sees that half of it is invisible, hence the blinking star phenomenon. As the ship gets closer, his sensors remain quiet. Putting it all together, he concludes that this is the Ghost Ship, but pushes the thought away, claiming it’s impossible. Slowly, the ship turns around and travels away from him. \nFlash forward seven more years and a newspaper published a story about Willard and Dobbin on Earth. Sadly, he would never get to see it. Willard’s son was about to create his own ship called Mary Lou II to honor his father. Willard spends his years alone trying to survive and also trying to fight off his memories of home, as they torture him. He kept up with the days and nights of Earth for many years and made his bed. But the memories of his old friends, the cities he lived in, and the crunch of snow beneath his feet drove him mad. Quickly, he lost track of the days. Another ship came and went, torturing him with hope yet again. \nAlmost twenty years passed and he grew more anguished every day. A ship came toward him and asked if he wanted to board, seeing as his ship was unlivable. Grateful he had checked the space suit beforehand, Willard traveled to the other ship and quickly fell into a deep sleep, exhausted by his years of solitude. After being drugged and evaded, Willard finally gets to speak to the captain of the ship on the third week who reveals that this is the Ghost Ship. Willard was only able to perceive the Ghost Ship because he and the Mary Lou were already ghosts, faded to the human eye. They are only shells on the Ghost Ship, and Willard is doomed to join them forever. ",
"John Willard's and Larry Dobbin's ship the \"Mary Lou\" had been damaged by a meteor during its mission to explore a small planet beyond Pluto, and Willard and Dobbin are waiting to die in space. Eventually, Dobbin dies, and he claims to see the fabled \"Ghost Ship\" seconds before his passing. After Dobbin's death, Willard manages to stay alive thanks to the machines that could convert waste into food and air. Willard spends two years alone, lost in hopeless thought and agony. Eventually, he sees a blinking shape in the distance, which he soon determines is an old-fashioned rocket ship. However, his instruments indicate there is no ship despite what he sees. Willard oscillates between doubting his own vision and believing there must be a scientific explanation for it. As he struggles with these thoughts, the ship leaves, and Willard spends seven years alone. Meanwhile, back on Earth, a newspaper from his hometown of Arden publishes an obituary of Willard and Dobbin indicating Willard’s son’s intention to build a “Mary Lou II.” Willard recalls memories with his wife and co-workers and the feeling of walking around Arden. He thinks about the legend of the Ghost Ship, which is said to come for the spacemen who die in space alone. A few years pass, and Willard sees the Ghost Ship pass close to him and turn away again, appearing to taunt him. He begins to lose track of time and guesses that as many as twenty years pass; he spends his days going through the motions of managing the ship as he feels himself aging physically. Then, he sees a ship approach, and this time it is a real ship. The ship sends out a rescue calls and retrieves Willard from the “Mary Lou.” Willard spends the next few days reacquainting himself with human interaction and struggling with the horrible memories of his decades in solitude. Then, he starts to realize something is off about the crew of the ship that rescued him. They will not engage him in any conversation other than the operations of the ship. When Willard meets the captain later, he reveals he actually is on the Ghost Ship after all. It only appeared solid to Willard the more the “Mary Lou” lost its mass and energy and itself became a kind of “ghost ship” through its aimless wandering through space. Willard realizes he is dead and will never again return to Earth. ",
"John Willard and Larry Dobbin are the lone space explorers aboard the Mary Lou, a ship that can’t move due to meteor damage. As the story begins, WIllard tries to comfort Dobbin as Dobbin dies. Before passing away, Dobbin sees what he believes to be “The Ghost Ship”, a fabled ship that comes for dying spacemen. Willard believes Ghost Ships are just fairy tales and that Dobbin was delirious. \n\nTwo years later, Willard sees what looks like a partially invisible rocket ship, though his ship’s control board shows no sign of anything. As the ship turns away and disappears, Willard wonders if he imagined it or if it could be The Ghost Ship, but decides that is impossible. \n\nSeven more years go by, and we read a small article from Willard and Dobbin’s hometown newspaper (that we are told Willard will never see), about the thirteenth anniversary of Willard and Dobbin embarking on their mission, how they have never been heard from again, and how Willard’s son is having a large spaceship manufactured in his father’s honor. \n\nBack on the Mary Lou, Willard can’t help but dream of his Earth days each night. He grows more and more despondent and thinks about Ghost Ships. He stops looking out the window, and isn’t sure if fifteen or twenty years have passed. He wonders if he has gone mad when he sees a ship coming. Everything changes when he realizes that it’s a real ship that taps out a real message on his space-telegrapher.\n\nThe other ship invites him to come aboard and he gratefully accepts, boarding it and immediately falling asleep. Over the next few weeks he drifts in and out of consciousness, knowing that he must be being drugged but also realizing it would be difficult for him to acclimate to being around others so soon. His memories start to come back and his mind starts to clear, and he notices that none of the men caring for him want to give him any information or answer his questions. \n\nAfter Willard awakens fully, one of the men says he’ll get the captain, who wanted to see Willard when he came to. The captain comes to see him, and Willard notices that he is very old. He tells the captain that he can’t wait to get to Earth and asks when they’ll go. The captain explains that after floating around in space for as long as they and Willard have, things and people lose their mass and energy. Willard hadn’t yet lost his twenty years ago, which is why their ship didn’t look fully formed to him then. Now that he has, he is just a shell like them and can see them fully. \n\nAs Willard puts the pieces together, the captain explains that they can’t go to Earth because they would pass right through it. Willard realizes that this is, in fact, a Ghost Ship, and that they are the ghosts, and the captain confirms this. \n"
] |
62244
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GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
|
What is the relationship between Dobbin and Willard?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Galactic Ghost by Walter Kubilius.
Relevant chunks:
GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
Question:
What is the relationship between Dobbin and Willard?
Answer:
|
[
"Larry Dobbin and John Willard are astronauts together in space on a mission to explore a planetoid beyond Pluto. When a meteor damages their rocket, they both realize they will never return to Earth. Willard considers Dobbin the best friend he has ever had friend, and when Dobbin is dying, Willard tries to keep his spirits up by telling him that he has a new plan for a way for them to return to Earth. When Dobbin wants to see the stars one last time before he dies, Willard raises him so that he can see them out the port window. When Dobbins sees the Ghost Ship and says that it has come for him, Willard assures him that nothing is there. After Dobbin dies, Willard holds a wake for him for two days before he recycles Dobbin’s body because the ship can still break down waste and refuse to create food and air. Afterward, Willard regrets disposing of Dobbin’s body. With Dobbin gone, Willard experiences great pain and loneliness. Eventually, Willard sees the Ghost Ship and knows that his friend was right about it.",
"Dobbin and Willard are close friends, companions, and colleagues. As they co-pilot and run the Mary Lou together in outer space, their relationship continued to develop. Willard even said that Dobbin was his sole friend in space. Being the only two people on board the Mary Lou brought them closer together and helped their relationship evolve. \nAlthough the reader does not see them together much, the effects of Dobbin on Willard are very evident and show how close the two of them were. Willard watched over his body for two Earth days before respectfully disposing of it. This dedication to his brethren shows how close the two of them became. \n",
"John Willard and Larry Dobbin are both spacemen piloting the “Mary Lou” on a mission to explore a small planet far away from Earth, past Pluto. Due to their isolation and sheer amount of time spent together, they become close friends. In fact, they are the only friends each other has ever had in outer space. Following the meteor strike that disables their ship, Willard understands Dobbin’s desire to return to Earth as well as the importance of having hope that such a return would one day be possible. Willard offers Dobbin support in his dying moments, holding him up so he can see out the window. This is when Dobbin sees the Ghost Ship right before passing away. Dobbin’s vision would influence Willard’s struggle between belief and disbelief throughout the remainder of his time in space.",
"Dobbin and Willard are the two space explorers aboard the Mary Lou, a ship bound to explore past Pluto. At the beginning of the story, Willard describes Dobbin as his only friend in space, and the best friend he ever had. The loss of Dobbin sends Willard into a spiral of loneliness and depression that lasts decades, as Dobbin was his only companion and connection to Earth. Dobbin only survives the first few paragraphs of the story, but he continues to have an influence on his colleague and friend. Dobbin believed he saw The Ghost Ship before he died, and the idea of that sticks with Willard throughout the rest of his journey aboard the Mary Lou and beyond, despite his skepticism. \n"
] |
62244
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GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
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What is the significance of memories in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Galactic Ghost by Walter Kubilius.
Relevant chunks:
GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
Question:
What is the significance of memories in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Both Dobbin and Willard have memories of Earth that sadden them and make them lonely. As Dobbin is dying, he remembers his life on Earth, and his greatest regret is that he will never see it again. Dobbin is satisfied with his life and experiences, but his Earth-loneliness prevents him from dying a happy man. Willard is also pained by his memories of Earth and what he has lost and will never have again. Alone in space, Willard considers his memories the only things of value to him. Because his memories cause him so much pain, Willard tries to ignore them or remove them, but they return in his dreams. His memories in his dreams are full of sensory details and other details that he did not notice when he was on Earth. However, when Willard is drugged and sleeping on the Ghost Ship, his dreams are of memories from the years he spent on the Mary Lou, and his dreams about people that he knew are unpleasant. Willard believes that if he could walk on Earth one more time, he would die a happy man.",
"Memories are both joys for Willard as well as his greatest anguish. The memories of his time on Earth, the sound of his friend’s voices, the feel of the ground beneath his feet, and even the sounds of the buildings and the city torture him since it gives him something to hope for. \nHe is not able to let go of his life because he longs to survive and live out the rest of his days on Earth. He spends almost 20 years alone while in space, holding on to his memories to keep him going. Unlike Dobbin, memories became Willard’s constant companion and the only thing that lasted with him throughout his time aboard the Mary Lou. \nIn the end, though, his memories basically haunted and tormented him. He would push them away, only to dream of them at night. His memories broke him and, without anyone beside him, Willard slowly faded away into nothing more than a shell of a man. \n",
"Memories function as a link to reality for Willard. The more he struggles to stay sane during his long periods of isolation, the more he relies on his vivid memories of Earth—walking along the streets of Arden, hearing the voices of his co-workers and scientists he used to know, the voices of his friends and wife–to keep him alive. Even as the “Mary Lou” slowly begins to lose its energy and shape and become a “ghost ship”, Willard is not aware that this process is even happening because his memories keep him grounded in a kind of reality. In this reality, his memories keep Willard alive because Willard believes he is alive and that a real ship has come to save him. The idea of returning to Earth and seeing those memories come to life again keeps Willard going for all those decades.",
"Memories are very significant in the story, because they both sustain Willard’s will to keep going and torment him when he is at his lowest points. He dreams of his Earth days at night and longs to hear the voices of his friends, family, and coworkers, and to see Earth again. When he is rescued by The Ghost Ship, he tells the Captain that the idea of seeing Earth is all that has kept him going. His Earth memories have also made him feel even lonelier as he has floated through space, and now on The Ghost Ship his memories of being stranded on the Mary Lou haunt him in his nightmares. His memories have alternately been a struggle and a lifeline, but are ultimately what have kept him connected to his humanity. \n"
] |
62244
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GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
|
What is the significance of Ghost Ships in the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Galactic Ghost by Walter Kubilius.
Relevant chunks:
GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
Question:
What is the significance of Ghost Ships in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"There are legends and tall tales about the Ghost Ships, told mainly by drunken men and professional storytellers. Willard remembers that there are stories on Earth about Ghost Ships that sail the Seven Seas. The story goes that the crews of Ghost Ships have broken a particular law, and their punishment is to roam forever. The Ghost Ship in space is said to be the home of spacemen who could not return to Earth. When Dobbin is dying, he claims to see the Ghost Ship and that it has come for him, but when Willard looks for the ship, he does not see it. Later, when Willard sees the Ghost Ship for himself for the first time, he tries to convince himself it is not really there. He remembers the stories about oceangoing Ghost Ships and reasons that there could also be Ghost Ships in space. When the Ghost Ship turns to leave, Willard is almost sorry to see it go because he has been so lonely. When the Ghost Ship appears to Willard for the second time, it has pulled alongside the Mary Lou, and Willard thinks it is a real ship. Only when the Ghost Ship abruptly speeds away and Willard sees stars shining through it does Willard realize it was the Ghost Ship, and he believes it is mocking him. With his third sighting of the Ghost Ship, Willard immediately thinks it is the Ghost Ship but then convinces himself it is not when it messages him. After he is on the ship, he realizes it is indeed the Ghost Ship and that he is now a Ghost. \n",
"The Ghost Ship is a tale told by spacemen to frighten each other or warn them of this grave possibility. Many of those that came close to death in space, or those who witnessed others dying with no hope of a return to earth, mentioned seeing a ghost ship. A faint outline of a ship that had come to take them away forever. Before Dobbin’s death at the story of the story, he tells Willard that he sees the ghost ship. \nThis ghost ship serves as another form of torture for Willard during his many years of solitude. The ghost ship would essentially check up on him, float by and see if he was still alive or not. This gave Willard false hope as he would dream that the ghost ship was a real rocket ship that was coming to rescue him. In the end, Willard is taken away by a ghost ship, though he thinks it’s a rescue ship initially, and he is doomed to forever fly through the solar system as a ghost and nothing more. There is no hope for his return to Earth. The men of the ghost ship are truly ghosts, invisible to the naked eye and only visible to those on their deathbeds. \n",
"The Ghost Ship is a legend that sailors and space travelers alike have claimed people see in the moments before they die at sea or in space. In the seconds before Dobbin dies in Willard’s arms, he looks out the window of the “Mary Lou” and claims to see the Ghost Ship himself. Throughout Willard’s long periods of solitude aboard the “Mary Lou”, he thinks he sees the Ghost Ship several times. First, from a distance, as a blinking light advancing closer and closer before turning back and sailing off into dark space; later, he thinks he sees the ship return, only this time it passes nearer before turning back and leaving again. With each return of the Ghost Ship, Willard believes he sees it clearer than he had before. After decades adrift in space, Willard believes a ship has finally come to rescue him. He does not think it is the Ghost Ship because it is solid, and he is greeted by a crew of people. However, the captain explains that the longer a vessel spends lost in space, the more it loses itself and slips into a kind of un-reality, along with those aboard. The more the “Mary Lou” drifted into this space, the more real the Ghost Ship became to Willard. Willard realizes that the “Mary Lou” has become a “ghost ship” herself.",
"Ghost Ships frame the story and the idea of them haunts Willard on and off throughout it. At the beginning, when Dobbin exclaims that he sees a Ghost Ship prior to his death, Willard tells himself that it was a hallucination from somewhere deep in his dying friend’s subconscious, just the result of the memory of an old legend. However, the idea of a Ghost Ship never really leaves Willard’s mind throughout the rest of the story. When he sees a partially transparent rocket ship that turns away and disappears, he wonders if it could be a Ghost Ship but talks himself out of it. Later he wonders if it was a ghost ship that was “mocking him”. When he is rescued by a ship that looks more real, the thought still crosses his mind that it could be a Ghost Ship and he again shuts the idea down. Ultimately, Ghost Ships are incredibly significant in the story, because it turns out that both the Mary Lou, and his rescue ship/new home, while not exactly like the tall tale, are, in effect, Ghost Ships. \n"
] |
62244
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GALACTIC GHOST
By WALTER KUBILIUS
The Flying Dutchman of space was a harbinger of death. But Willard wasn't superstitions. He had seen the phantom—and lived.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Winter 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The only friend in space Willard had ever known was dying. Dobbin's lips were parched and his breath came spasmodically. The tips of his fingers that had so many times caressed the control board of the Mary Lou were now black as meteor dust.
"We'll never see Earth again," he whispered feebly, plucked weakly at the cover.
"Nonsense!" Willard broke in hurriedly, hoping that the dying man would not see through the lie. "We've got the sun's gravity helping us drift back to Earth! We'll be there soon! You'll get well soon and we'll start to work again on a new idea of mine...." His voice trailed helplessly away and the words were lost. It was no use.
The sick man did not hear him. Two tears rolled down his cheeks. His face contorted as he tried to withhold a sob.
"To see Earth again!" he said weakly. "To walk on solid ground once more!"
"Four years!" Willard echoed faintly. He knew how his space mate felt. No man can spend four years away from his home planet, and fail to be anguished. A man could live without friends, without fortune, but no man could live without Earth. He was like Anteus, for only the feel of the solid ground under his feet could give him courage to go among the stars.
Willard also knew what he dared not admit to himself. He, too, like Dobbin, would never see Earth again. Perhaps, some thousand years from now, some lonely wanderers would find their battered hulk of a ship in space and bring them home again.
Dobbin motioned to him and, in answer to a last request, Willard lifted him so he faced the port window for a final look at the panorama of the stars.
Dobbin's eyes, dimming and half closed, took in the vast play of the heavens and in his mind he relived the days when in a frail craft he first crossed interstellar space. But for Earth-loneliness Dobbin would die a happy man, knowing that he had lived as much and as deeply as any man could.
Silently the two men watched. Dobbin's eyes opened suddenly and a tremor seized his body. He turned painfully and looked at Willard.
"I saw it!" his voice cracked, trembling.
"Saw what?"
"It's true! It's true! It comes whenever a space man dies! It's there!"
"In heaven's name, Dobbin," Willard demanded, "What do you see? What is it?"
Dobbin lifted his dark bony arm and pointed out into star-studded space.
"The Ghost Ship!"
Something clicked in Willard's memory. He had heard it spoken of in whispers by drunken space men and professional tellers of fairy tales. But he had never put any stock in them. In some forgotten corner of Dobbin's mind the legend of the Ghost Ship must have lain, to come up in this time of delirium.
"There's nothing there," he said firmly.
"It's come—for me!" Dobbin cried. He turned his head slowly toward Willard, tried to say something and then fell back upon the pillow. His mouth was open and his eyes stared unseeing ahead. Dobbin was now one with the vanished pioneers of yesterday. Willard was alone.
For two days, reckoned in Earth time, Willard kept vigil over the body of his friend and space mate. When the time was up he did what was necessary and nothing remained of Harry Dobbin, the best friend he had ever had. The atoms of his body were now pure energy stored away in the useless motors of the Mary Lou .
The weeks that followed were like a blur in Willard's mind. Though the ship was utterly incapable of motion, the chance meteor that damaged it had spared the convertors and assimilators. Through constant care and attention the frail balance that meant life or death could be kept. The substance of waste and refuse was torn down and rebuilt as precious food and air. It was even possible to create more than was needed.
When this was done, Willard immediately regretted it. For it would be then that the days and the weeks would roll by endlessly. Sometimes he thought he would go mad when, sitting at the useless control board, which was his habit, he would stare for hours and hours in the direction of the Sun where he knew the Earth would be. A great loneliness would then seize upon him and an agony that no man had ever known would tear at his heart. He would then turn away, full of despair and hopeless pain.
Two years after Dobbin's death a strange thing happened. Willard was sitting at his accustomed place facing the unmoving vista of the stars. A chance glance at Orion's belt froze him still. A star had flickered! Distinctly, as if a light veil had been placed over it and then lifted, it dimmed and turned bright again. What strange phenomena was this? He watched and then another star faded momentarily in the exact fashion. And then a third! And a fourth! And a fifth!
Willard's heart gave a leap and the lethargy of two years vanished instantly. Here, at last, was something to do. It might be only a few minutes before he would understand what it was, but those few minutes would help while away the maddening long hours. Perhaps it was a mass of fine meteorites or a pocket of gas that did not disperse, or even a moving warp of space-light. Whatever it was, it was a phenomena worth investigating and Willard seized upon it as a dying man seizes upon the last flashing seconds of life.
Willard traced its course by the flickering stars and gradually plotted its semi-circular course. It was not from the solar system but, instead, headed toward it. A rapid check-up on his calculations caused his heart to beat in ever quickening excitement. Whatever it was, it would reach the Mary Lou .
Again he looked out the port. Unquestionably the faint mass was nearing his ship. It was round in shape and almost invisible. The stars, though dimmed, could still be seen through it. There was something about its form that reminded him of an old-fashioned rocket ship. It resembled one of those that had done pioneer service in the lanes forty years ago or more. Resembled one? It was one! Unquestionably, though half-invisible and like a piece of glass immersed in water, it was a rocket ship.
But the instruments on the control board could not lie. The presence of any material body within a hundred thousand miles would be revealed. But the needle on the gauge did not quiver. Nothing indicated the presence of a ship. But the evidence of his eyes was incontestable.
Or was it? Doubt gripped him. Did the loneliness of all these years in space twist his mind till he was imagining the appearance of faint ghost-like rocket ships?
The thought shot through his mind like a thunder bolt. Ghost Ship! Was this the thing that Dobbin had seen before he died? But that was impossible. Ghost Ships existed nowhere but in legends and tall tales told by men drunk with the liquors of Mars.
"There is no ship there. There is no ship there," Willard told himself over and over again as he looked at the vague outline of the ship, now motionless a few hundred miles away.
Deep within him a faint voice cried, " It's come—for me! " but Willard stilled it. This was no fantasy. There was a scientific reason for it. There must be! Or should there be? Throughout all Earth history there had been Ghost Ships sailing the Seven Seas—ships doomed to roam forever because their crew broke some unbreakable law. If this was true for the ships of the seas, why not for the ships of empty space?
He looked again at the strange ship. It was motionless. At least it was not nearing him. Willard could see nothing but its vague outline. A moment later he could discern a faint motion. It was turning! The Ghost Ship was turning back! Unconsciously Willard reached out with his hand as if to hold it back, for when it was gone he would be alone again.
But the Ghost Ship went on. Its outline became smaller and smaller, fainter and fainter.
Trembling, Willard turned away from the window as he saw the rocket recede and vanish into the emptiness of space. Once more the dreaded loneliness of the stars descended upon him.
Seven years passed and back on Earth in a small newspaper that Willard would never see there was published a small item:
" Arden, Rocketport —Thirteen years ago the Space Ship Mary Lou under John Willard and Larry Dobbin left the Rocket Port for the exploration of an alleged planetoid beyond Pluto. The ship has not been seen or heard from since. J. Willard, II, son of the lost explorer, is planning the manufacture of a super-size exploration ship to be called Mary Lou II , in memory of his father."
Memories die hard. A man who is alone in space with nothing but the cold friendship of star-light looks back upon memories as the only things both dear and precious to him.
Willard, master and lone survivor of the Mary Lou , knew this well for he had tried to rip the memories of Earth out of his heart to ease the anguish of solitude within him. But it was a thing that could not be done.
And so it was that each night—for Willard did not give up the Earth-habit of keeping time—Willard dreamed of the days he had known on Earth.
In his mind's eye, he saw himself walking the streets of Arden and feeling the crunch of snow or the soft slap of rainwater under his feet. He heard again, in his mind, the voices of friends he knew. How beautiful and perfect was each voice! How filled with warmth and friendship! There was the voice of his beautiful wife whom he would never see again. There were the gruff and deep voices of his co-workers and scientists.
Above all there were the voices of the cities, and the fields and the shops where he had worked. All these had their individual voices. Odd that he had never realized it before, but things become clearer to a man who is alone.
Clearer? Perhaps not. Perhaps they become more clouded. How could he, for example, explain the phenomena of the Ghost Ship? Was it really only a product of his imagination? What of all the others who had seen it? Was it possible for many different men under many different situations to have the same exact illusion? Reason denied that. But perhaps space itself denies reason.
Grimly he retraced the legend of the Ghost Ship. A chance phrase here and a story there put together all that he knew:
Doomed for all eternity to wander in the empty star-lanes, the Ghost Ship haunts the Solar System that gave it birth. And this is its tragedy, for it is the home of spacemen who can never go home again. When your last measure of fuel is burnt and your ship becomes a lifeless hulk—the Ghost will come—for you!
And this is all there was to the legend. Merely a tale of some fairy ship told to amuse and to while away the days of a star-voyage. Bitterly, Willard dismissed it from his mind.
Another year of loneliness passed. And still another. Willard lost track of the days. It was difficult to keep time for to what purpose could time be kept. Here in space there was no time, nor was there reason for clocks and records. Days and months and years became meaningless words for things that once may have had meaning. About three years must have passed since his last record in the log book of the Mary Lou . At that time, he remembered, he suffered another great disappointment. On the port side there suddenly appeared a full-sized rocket ship. For many minutes Willard was half-mad with joy thinking that a passing ship was ready to rescue him. But the joy was short-lived, for the rocket ship abruptly turned away and slowly disappeared. As Willard watched it go away he saw the light of a distant star through the space ship. A heart-breaking agony fell upon him. It was not a ship from Earth. It was the Ghost Ship, mocking him.
Since then Willard did not look out the window of his craft. A vague fear troubled him that perhaps the Ghost Ship might be here, waiting and watching, and that he would go mad if he saw it.
How many years passed he could not tell. But this he knew. He was no longer a young man. Perhaps fifteen years has disappeared into nothing. Perhaps twenty. He did not know and he did not care.
Willard awoke from a deep sleep and prepared his bed. He did it, not because it was necessary, but because it was a habit that had long been ingrained in him through the years.
He checked and rechecked every part of the still functioning mechanism of the ship. The radio, even though there was no one to call, was in perfect order. The speed-recording dials, even though there was no speed to record, were in perfect order. And so with every machine. All was in perfect order. Perfect useless order, he thought bitterly, when there was no way whatever to get sufficient power to get back to Earth, long forgotten Earth.
He was leaning back in his chair when a vague uneasiness seized him. He arose and slowly walked over to the window, his age already being marked in the ache of his bones. Looking out into the silent theater of the stars, he suddenly froze.
There was a ship, coming toward him!
For a moment the reason in his mind tottered on a balance. Doubt assailed him. Was this the Ghost Ship come to torment him again? But no phantom this! It was a life and blood rocket ship from Earth! Starlight shone on it and not through it! Its lines, window, vents were all solid and had none of the ghost-like quality he remembered seeing in the Ghost Ship in his youth.
For another split second he thought that perhaps he, too, like Dobbin, had gone mad and that the ship would vanish just as it approached him.
The tapping of the space-telegrapher reassured him.
"CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU," the message rapped out, "CALLING SPACE SHIP MARY LOU."
With trembling fingers that he could scarcely control, old Willard sent the answering message.
"SPACE SHIP MARY LOU REPLYING. RECEIVED MESSAGE. THANK GOD!"
He broke off, unable to continue. His heart was ready to burst within him and the tears of joy were already welling in his eyes. He listened to the happiest message he had ever heard:
"NOTICE THAT SPACE SHIP MARY LOU IS DISABLED AND NOT SPACE WORTHY. YOU ARE INVITED TO COME ABOARD. HAVE YOU SPACE SUIT AND—ARE YOU ABLE TO COME?"
Willard, already sobbing with joy, could send only two words.
"YES! COMING!"
The years of waiting were over. At last he was free of the Mary Lou . In a dream like trance, he dressed in his space suit, pathetically glad that he had already checked every detail of it a short time ago. He realized suddenly that everything about the Mary Lou was hateful to him. It was here that his best friend died, and it was here that twenty years of his life were wasted completely in solitude and despair.
He took one last look and stepped into the air-lock.
The Earth-ship, he did not see its name, was only a hundred yards away and a man was already at the air-lock waiting to help him. A rope was tossed to him. He reached for it and made his way to the ship, leaving the Mary Lou behind him forever.
Suddenly the world dropped away from him. Willard could neither see nor say anything. His heart was choked with emotion.
"It's all right," a kindly voice assured him, "You're safe now."
He had the sensation of being carried by several men and then placed in bed. The quiet of deep sleep descended upon him.
He woke many times in the following days, but the privations of the passing years had drained his strength and his mind, had made him so much of a hermit that the presence of other men frightened him to the point of gibbering insanity.
He knew that the food and drink were drugged, for after eating he never remembered seeing the men enter the room to care for him and to remove the dirty dishes. But there was enough sanity in his mind to also realize that, without the gradual reawakening of his senses to the value of human companionship, he might not be able to stand the mental shock of moving about among his people back on Earth.
During those passing days, he savored each new impression, comparing it with what he remembered from that age-long past when he and his friends had walked on Earth's great plains and ridden on the oceans' sleek ships or flown with the wings of birds over the mountain ranges. And each impression was doubly enjoyable, for his memory was hazy and confused.
Gradually, though, his mind cleared; he remembered the past, and he no longer was afraid of the men who visited him from time to time. But there was a strangeness about the men that he could not fathom; they refused to talk about anything, any subject, other than the actual running of the great ship. Always, when he asked his eager questions, they mumbled and drifted away.
And then in his third week on the rescue ship, he went to sleep one night while peering from the port hole at the blue ball of Earth swimming in the blackness of space. He slept and he dreamed of the years he had spent by himself in the drifting, lifeless hulk of the Mary Lou . His dreams were vivid, peopled with men and women he had once known, and were horrible with the fantasies of terror that years of solitary brooding had implanted deep in his mind.
He awoke with a start and a cry of alarm ran through him as he thought that perhaps he might still be in the Mary Lou . The warm, smiling face of a man quickly reassured him.
"I'll call the captain," the space man said. "He said to let him know when you came to."
Willard could only nod in weak and grateful acceptance. It was true! He pressed his head back against the bed's pillows. How soft! How warm! He yawned and stretched his arms as a thrill of happiness shot through his entire body.
He would see Earth again! That single thought ran over and over in his mind without stopping. He would see Earth again! Perhaps not this year and perhaps not the next—for the ship might be on some extra-Plutonian expedition. But even if it would take years before it returned to home base Willard knew that those years would fly quickly if Earth was at the end of the trail.
Though he had aged, he still had many years before him. And those years, he vowed, would be spent on Earth and nowhere else.
The captain, a pleasant old fellow, came into the room as Willard stood up and tried to walk. The gravity here was a bit different from that of his ship, but he would manage.
"How do you feel, Space Man Willard?"
"Oh, you know me?" Willard looked at him in surprise, and then smiled,
"Of course, you looked through the log book of the Mary Lou ."
The captain nodded and Willard noticed with surprise that he was a very old man.
"You don't know how much I suffered there," Willard said slowly, measuring each word. "Years in space—all alone! It's a horrible thing!"
"Yes?" the old captain said.
"Many times I thought I would go completely mad. It was only the thought and hope that some day, somehow, an Earth-ship would find me and help me get back to Earth. If it was not for that, I would have died. I could think of nothing but of Earth, of blue green water, of vast open spaces and the good brown earth. How beautiful it must be now!"
A note of sadness, matched only by that of Willard's, entered the captain's eyes.
"I want to walk on Earth just once—then I can die."
Willard stopped. A happy dreamy smile touched his lips.
"When will we go to Earth?" he asked.
The Captain did not answer. Willard waited and a strange memory tugged at him.
"You don't know," the Captain said. It was not a question or a statement. The Captain found it hard to say it. His lips moved slowly.
Willard stepped back and before the Captain told him, he knew .
"Matter is relative," he said, "the existent under one condition is non-existent under another. The real here is the non-real there. All things that wander alone in space are gradually drained of their mass and energy until nothing is left but mere shells. That is what happened to the Mary Lou . Your ship was real when we passed by twenty years ago. It is now like ours, a vague outline in space. We cannot feel the change ourselves, for change is relative. That is why we became more and more solid to you, as you became more and more faint to any Earth-ship that might have passed. We are real—to ourselves. But to some ship from Earth which has not been in space for more than fifteen years—to that ship, to all intents and purposes, we do not exist.
"Then this ship," Willard said, stunned, "you and I and everything on it..."
"... are doomed," the Captain said. "We cannot go to Earth for the simple reason that we would go through it!"
The vision of Earth and green trees faded. He would never see Earth again. He would never feel the crunch of ground under feet as he walked. Never would listen to the voices of friends and the songs of birds. Never. Never. Never....
"Then this is the Ghost Ship and we are the Ghosts!"
"Yes."
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Aide Memoire by Keith Laumer.
Relevant chunks:
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"As the story opens, Ambassador Magnan briefs Councillor Retief on the Terrestrial Embassy’s request for sponsorship of youth groups on the planet Fust. Councillor Retief is not interested. Magnan specifically suggests that Retief sponsor the group SCARS (Sexual, Cultural and Athletic Recreational Society), and warns Retief that the rival Groaci may fill any void. Retief suggests researching the youth groups before giving them money. Magnan is dismissive. Retief is still not interested, and leaves to go look at plans for a new passenger liner being built by the Fustians. \nRetief takes a flat-car to the ship yard and meets Whonk, who is a shipyard clerk. He asks to see the blueprints, which he photographs. He and Whonk chat about the attitude of the youth, and Whonk blames it on their new leader, Slock, who hangs around with Yith, a member of the Groaci embassy.\nLater, while Retief is on his way home to dress for a dinner and press event organized by Magnan, two Fustian youths threaten him on the bus. Retief realizes that they were after his photos, which showed that the ship under construction was a battle cruiser, not a passenger liner. He also realizes that Whonk may be in danger. Retief escapes the youths and races back to the shipyard to find that Whonk has been dragged off and tied up in a warehouse. From the Fustian’s wounds, Retief realized that they had tried to kill him.\nRetief figures out that the Fustian youths have taken some titanite, an explosive, over to a ship called the Moss Rock, which would be full of dignitaries later. He and Whonk race over there and encounter more Fustians, and win a fight with them, effectively breaking up the Groaci-backed plot to blow up the ship. \nRetief arrives at the banquet a little late, and exchanges a few words with Magnan, who proceeds to make the Fustians miserable with his cultural insensitivity. A few minutes later, the SCARS leader, Slock, arrives. Retief reveals Slock’s plan: Slock, backed by the Groaci, was planning to take over Fust. The Groaci tried to frame the Terrestrial Embassy for the plot.\nSlock escaped. Retief went back toward the Moss Rock, where Whonk tackled Slock, and Retief accosted Yith. Whonk wanted to take revenge on Yith for attacking him earlier, but Retief instead negotiated a deal in which Yith, who had mastered removing the Fustian carapace surgically, which would be a great relief to Whonk and other elders, would agree to do so in return for not being ritually dismembered. Just as this agreement was completed, Slock tried to escape again, but Whonk dumped him on the Moss Rock, and set the autopilot for Groaci, still full of titanite. It blew up on the way there.\nMagnan wrested what he could, diplomatically speaking, from the wreckage of the youth sponsorship program and moved on to plans to sponsor Senior Citizens Groups.\n",
"This story follows Retief, a Terrestrial diplomat working on the surface of the Fustian planet, where these two species co-exist with the Groaci. At the start of the story, Retief is talking to the Terrestrial Ambassador about a new program that the Fustians are looking for sponsorship for, that the Ambassador wants Retief to take care of. Retief, the Councillor, does not seem interested, and heads out to the shipyards to ask the people there some questions about a new ship being built. An older Fustian named Whonk allows him to see the plans for the ship and tells Retief about Slock, one of the local leaders of the Youths that seems to be a bad influence. These troublesome characters showed up to talk to Whonk and scare Retief off of the docks as Retief slips out unnoticed. He finds plans in the Embassy's library for an old battle cruiser that match the plans for the new ship, pointing him towards a plot to re-introduce weapons into the society. He finds Whonk, injured from the others' attempt to extract information from him, and the two of them piece together the clues: there was titanite, a dangerous explosive, that is going to be placed on the fanciest boat at the docks, the Moss Rock. When they get to that ship to take a look, they find a variety of items emblazoned with the logo of SCARS, the Youth Group that Ambassador Magnan wanted Retief to sponsor at the beginning. Retief figures that these items are here as planted false evidence, so that the explosion would be pinned on the Youth Group, and thus the Terrestrials by extension. Retief's goal is to destroy this plot--Whonk captures a Fustian who they realize has had his shell surgically removed, something that they thought impossible. Retief takes this to mean that the Groaci have more medical knowledge than they realized, and that they are responsible for this plot. In order to expose this plan, he heads to the banquet where the sponsorship of the Youth Group is being announced. He interrupts the Ambassador's grand announcement, exposing the plot to the press that was already gathered there. He knew Slock to be a gang leader, told everyone of the plan to blow up the Moss Rock and his deal with the Groaci, and then runs toward the boat with Whonk and the Ambassador. Whonk wanted to follow through with his society's classic ceremonial revenge against Yith, the Groaci at the ship, but Retief convinces them to have a sort of trade: Yith would share the medical knowledge to remove Whonk's heavy outer shell so that it would no longer be a nuisance and a heavyweight, and Slock is thrown onto the Moss Rock as it leaves the docks and explodes. With the plot exposed, the Ambassador wants to move on to more social projects, but Retief heads out for a fishing vacation with his new friend Whonk.",
"The story begins with a meeting between Ambassador Magnan and Councillor Retief, who represents the Terrestrial Embassy on the planet Fust. The planet is populated with turtle-like creatures called Fustians (the younger Fustians lack the hard shell of the mature ones). Magnan assigns Retief the mission of sponsoring a new youth movement there called the Sexual, Cultural, Athletic Recreational Society (SCARS). Instead, Retief prefers to investigate a new passenger ship being built by the Fustians. Upon his arrival at the shipyard, Retief meets Whonk, an elderly Fustian who maintains documents, and he shows Retief the blueprints for the new ship. A young Fustian named Slock enters and arouses Retief’s suspicions by inquiring what he wants with the plans. After he leaves the shipyard, Retief is attacked by two young Fustians, and he returns to find Whonk has been attacked as well. Retief notices a stain on the ground that Whonk tells him is a remnant of four drums belonging to the Groaci—an alien species that operated a competing embassy. Retief had seen interacting a Groaci attache interacting with the youth that had attacked him earlier. The drums had been loaded onto a boat called \"Moss Rock.\" After identifying the smelly stain as an explosive called titanite, Retief and Whonk go to \"Moss Rock\" and discover a box containing a SCARS uniform. While there, they are attacked by an older-looking youth Fustian and discover that he is not a youth at all; rather, his shell has been removed by some mysterious method. They ward off another attack by his friends, and Retief decides to head to the sponsorship ceremony, realizing that the Groaci are likely taking advantage of the SCARS group's distaste for Fustian leadership to advance their plot to bomb \"Moss Rock\". At the sponsorship ceremony, Ambassador Magnan introduces Slock as guest of honor, and Retief and Whonk seize the opportunity to apprehend him and explain his deal with the Groaci to the press: The Groaci would supply weapons, and Slock would make sure they were installed on the ship. The SCARS uniforms found at the scene of the exploded ship would implicate them along with the Terrestrial Embassy, because of its sponsorship of SCARS. Magnan notes that Slock was scheduled to be on the ship, and Retief rebuts that this reveals the Groaci's intention to get rid of Slock after he'd done their bidding. Thus, the disaster at \"Moss Rock\" would cement the Groaci's control of Fust. Retief returns to the \"Moss Rock\" and captures the Groaci diplomat Yith, and Whonk captures Slock, whom they both discover has also had his shell surgically removed to appear younger. Retief makes a deal with Whonk to spare Yith's life in exchange for the same shell-removal surgery. Whonk takes his revenge on Slock by placing him back on the \"Moss Rock\" and exploding the ship with the titanite barrels on its course to Groaci. Retief informs Magnan that this display will prevent the Groaci from pursuing any further action against Fust.",
"Ambassador Magnan wants Retief, the Councillor working with him at the Terrestrial Embassy, to sponsor the Fustian youth group the Sexual, Cultural, and Athletic Recreational Society (SCARS), but Retief isn’t interested. Instead, he wants to check out the new passenger liner that the Fustians are building, but he does express concern about the Groaci’s interest in Fust, which has a steel-age manufacturing economy while Groaci is into crude atomics. At the shipyards, an old Fustian named Whonk shows him the blueprints for the new passenger liner. Retief takes photographs of the blueprints to study them later. Slock, a young Fustian, comes with a Groaci Embassy military attache and beats up on Whonk while Retief sneaks out the back.\n\nLater in the day, Retief has to attend a dinner where the sponsor for the SCARS youth group will be announced. On the way, he is accosted by two Fustain youth who tell him they want the films for the pictures he took of the blueprints. Retief manages to elude them. He has looked at pictures and realized they are plans for a replica of a battlecruiser used two hundred years ago and has gun placements. Retief realizes that Whonk must have told them about his pictures and knows that he wouldn’t tell them willingly, so he goes to Whonk’s office to look for him. He sees signs of a struggle and finds Whonk tied up behind some bales where he is out of sight. Whonk reveals he was attacked by a Groaci, Slock, and his cohorts, and they tried to kill him. Retief recognizes the smell of an explosive, and Whonk tells him drums of it have been placed on a barge called Moss Rock. \n\nRetief and Whonk decide to go back to the Embassy but are attacked by one of the young Fustians who attacked Whonk earlier that day. As they wrestle with him, they pull off his cloak to discover that his carapace has been removed, so he isn’t really a youth. Whonk is stunned because he believed it wasn’t possible to remove a carapace without killing the Fustian. \n\nAt the dinner, Magnan announces that Retief has won the “bidding” to sponsor the SCARS. Retief sneaks up on Slock and tells Magnan that he has figured out that the Groaci are planning to take over a local world and then branch out to more worlds. They have been using the young Fustians to help them set up their attack but planned to kill them after everything was ready. Retief catches a Groaci, and Whonk wants to kill him, but Retief gets him to promise to have the Groaci surgeon remove the carapaces from the older Fustians like Whonk. When Retief reports the scheme to Magnan, he tells his superior that the Moss Rock is headed for Groaci and will explode there, ending their problems with the Groaci.\n"
] |
61198
|
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
|
Who is Whonk, and what is his relevance to the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Aide Memoire by Keith Laumer.
Relevant chunks:
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
Question:
Who is Whonk, and what is his relevance to the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Whonk is a very old Fustian who works as a clerk at the shipyards. He meets Retief when Retief comes to to inquire about seeing plans for the new passenger liner. Whonk is neutral and correct, but not especially friendly. His partnership, and it seems fair to say, friendship with Retief really begins when Retief returns to the shipyard to look for Whonk and finds that the Fustian thugs who tried and failed to kill him, due to his thick, mature skin and shell, have left him tied up, in an undignified position on his back.\nRetief apologizes for putting him in danger, and gets the old Fustian back on his feet. Whonk is so grateful that he tells Retief, “My cows are yours,” a heartfelt, traditional Fustian expression of gratitude. \nWhonk is extremely angry about what the Fustian Slock and his gang have done to him, and throws in his lot with Retief. Thereafter, every time Retief is in physical danger from Fustians, Whonk is right there to help. \nAt the end of the story, Whonk steps in again to help Retief capture Yith, a member of the Groaci diplomatic mission, and Slock the rebel adult Fustian with no carapace. His desire for vengeance against these two nearly overwhelms his good sense. He puts Slock on the Moss Rose with the titanite that Slock had intended to use against Fustian politicians, and sets the rocket to blast off to Groaci, knowing that it would below up before it got there. \nBut Retief manages to settle him down enough not to take Yith apart piece by piece, by getting the Groaci to do something that would make Whonk’s life a lot easier and more pleasant: surgically remove his carapace. \nWhonk is steadfast, reliable, implacable – a good sidekick for Retief.\n",
"Whonk is the older Fustian who helps Retief uncover the Groacian plot. He is looking after papers when Retief asks to see the plans of the new ship being built, but is hurt by the gang members and Youths that come in after Retief leaves. He is still willing to help Retief after this, and the two of them work together to piece together their evidence. Being older means that Whonk has a very heavy shell that keeps him from moving quickly, but he is very strong--he manages to capture a number of characters throughout the story to keep them from running away. Not only is Whonk the reason Retief was able to confirm that the new ship was indeed meant to be a battle cruiser, helping to uncover the plot, but the two of them become friends and go on a fishing trip together at the end of the story.",
"Whonk is an elderly Fustian who works managing documents at the shipyard where Retief goes to investigate the new passenger ship being built there. Whonk shares the documents with Retief, who notices its similarities to a defunct ship design that had been previously used in combat. Whonk educates Retief on the rebellious ways of the younger Fustians before they witness a Groaci military attache consulting with some youth outside his office. The youth attack Whonk after Retief’s departure, nearly severing his head. When Retief returns to help him, Whonk is very grateful and continues to help Retief on his mission to discover the real connection between the Groaci and SCARS. Whonk guides Retief to the “Moss Rock” and helps Retief defeat yet another group of attacking youth. Whonk discovers that one of the youths is not a youth at all but rather an older Fustian with a detached shell. He is baffled by this. After a fracas at the sponsorship ceremony, Retief captures the Groaci attaché, and Whonk apprehends Slock, whom he quickly discovers is also an older Fustian with a surgically-removed shell. Retief convinces Whonk to forego his act of vengeance on the Groaci, and in exchange the Groaci would provide the elders of Fust with the same surgical procedure provided to the SCARS members. Pleased with this arrangement, Whonk agrees, but he is still seeking vengeance. He places Slock aboard the “Moss Rock” and sends it on a path to Groaci. The ship explodes on the way, killing Slock, and sending a message to the Groaci to stay away from Fust.",
"Whonk is an older Fustian who is very polite and helpful to Retief. He lets Retief look at the blueprints for the passenger ship that the younger Fustians are building with the Groacis and then apologizes for the rudeness of the younger Fustian who confronts Retief for looking at the plans. Whonk becomes Retief’s ally right away; he holds off the younger Fustians who come back to confront Retief, giving Retief a chance to sneak out the back door. After two younger Fustians tell Retief they want his films from his pictures of the plans, he realizes they must have gotten the information about the pictures from Whonk and knew Whonk wouldn’t have given it to them freely. When he checks on Whonk, he finds him tied up. The younger Fustians had tried to kill him. From then on, the two work together, checking the Moss Rock for explosives that have been removed from the storage area. When attackers come, Whonk protects Retief and blocks the attackers with his carapace. Whonk provides Retief with information that he needs to determine who is involved in criminal activity and what that criminal activity is. At the end of the story, he provides justice for Slock by putting him aboard the Moss Rock before it blows up so that he gets his just rewards. When everything settles, Whonk offers to take Retief on a fishing vacation."
] |
61198
|
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
|
Summarize the Fustian life cycle and culture.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Aide Memoire by Keith Laumer.
Relevant chunks:
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
Question:
Summarize the Fustian life cycle and culture.
Answer:
|
[
"Fustians somewhat resemble gigantic, intelligent snapping turtles, and like turtles, start life as eggs. During their youth and adolescence, they are relatively agile and have no shells (unlike turtles). It is notable how many Fustian elders take a dim view of adolescents, with the Minister of Fust himself saying that the Youth should be “kept penned with the livestock until they grow a carapace to tame their irresponsibility.”\nWhen Fustians mature, they develop an enormous, horny carapace which they are obliged to carry around on their backs for the rest of their lives, which last over a thousand years. The carapaces cause the adult Fustians to be slow-moving, and they take up a lot of space – hence their public transportation consists of flat-cars instead of buses with seats. Unfortunately, not much is known by off-worlders of Fustian females.\nLike most intelligent races, Fustians enjoy music. The frequencies at which their music is played are subsonic, and therefore not audible to the human ear. Likewise, their ears are quite sensitive to high frequencies, such as those produced by tapping on a crystal glass with a spoon. This is not just unpleasant, but painful to Fustian ears.\n",
"Fustians are similar to tortoises in build, with yellow eyes, scales, and very thick hides that leak purple blood when cut. They have a much longer life-cycle than humans, as those that are 75 years of age are still considered to be teenagers or even youths. \n\nAs Faustians age, they grow larger, their voices get deeper, and they eventually acquire very heavy shells. It is past their current medical knowledge to safely remove the shells, though we find out at the end of the story that the Groaci have discovered a technique that allows them to do this. This is important because the shells slow the older Fustians down and are often considered a nuisance. When they are young, they are very secretive, and wary of strangers from other groups and species. The older Fustians do not seem to mind the humans (and aliens in general) as much, and sometimes apologize for the behavior of the younger ones. It seems that they wish they could do more to control their behavior, but the younger ones are physically much faster and can escape attempts at control. It also seems to be the case that this difference in behavior is more acute now than it has been in the past, perhaps due to social pressures from other groups. \n\nSleep is very important to them, and regular greetings in day-to-day life include well wishes for a long rest, as well as specific types of dreams. When they are angry or want to insult someone, they wish nightmares upon them. They have regular siesta times during the work day. Sleep is so important to them that they have a National Dirge called the Lament of Hatching. Ceremonial revenge is also important to them: although the older Fustians are not necessarily quick to anger, they follow through once they have been wronged. ",
"Fustians are a species turtle-like in their appearance. They have very long lives; in fact, the average age of a Fustian youth is seventy-five years old. As they age, they develop a hard-shell on their backs, which is quite heavy and hard. This causes them to move slower as they get older. The younger Fustians can move quite fast in comparison. However, the older Fustians appear to be a great deal stronger and can hold their own in combat, as demonstrated by Whonk when he defends himself against Slock’s cronies and eventually captures Slock. The elderly Fustians also grow thicker skin, which is what ultimately prevents Whonk from being decapitated when he is first attacked. Fustians have turtle-like mouths that snap when they are angry. Steel manufacturing fuels their economy. While older Fustians are generally hospitable and patient, the younger Fustians have become frustrated with the ways of the elderly Fustian leadership, and their drive to change things blinds them to being manipulated by the Groaci. Although weapons are illegal on Fust, the younger Fustians seem willing to break this rule by accepting weapons from the Groaci in exchange for their knowledge of the ships.",
"The Fustians look like turtles and have extremely long lifespans. Younger Fustians do not have a carapace, but older ones do, which can be quite heavy. Seventy-five-year-olds are considered youths, like teenagers, because they can live for about two thousand years. The 75-year-olds have a reputation as being at a trying age. As Whonk explains to Retief, the youth have a reputation for “shame” and “discourtesy.” The Elders feel that there is little they can do about the youths' misbehavior since the Elders are so much slower with their carapaces. They have no police and have never needed them until the youth became so unruly. They have a youth group, the Sexual, Cultural, and Athletic Recreational Society (SCARS), that needs a sponsor and wants someone to provide them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment, and so forth. The Fustians’ dwellings have a fishy odor and are found along a broad cobbled street. They have a caste system; the driver of a flat car is a member of the labor caste. Their greetings relate to peaceful sleep: “Long-may-you-sleep” and “May-you-dream-of-the-deeps.” Likewise, their insults related to unpleasant sleep: “May you toss in nightmares!” The oldest Fustians are forced into retirement and given once-daily feedings; Whonk says this is nothing to look forward to for his next thousand years. They have a strong sense of right and wrong and carry out ceremonial revenge when wronged."
] |
61198
|
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
|
Who is Magnan, and what is his role in and relevance to the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Aide Memoire by Keith Laumer.
Relevant chunks:
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
Question:
Who is Magnan, and what is his role in and relevance to the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Magnan is the Ambassador to Fust, and thus is Retief’s boss. He is also a spineless, political wind-sniffing clod. His main role, or function in the story is as a foil to the hero, Retief. Magnan’s clueless blathering sets up Retief’s dry, sarcastic remarks – remarks which, if Magnan were not so oblivious, would perhaps offend Magnan to the point of firing Retief. \nWhile Retief is running around Fust getting into fist fights and spoiling terrorists’ plots, Magnan is back at the office shuffling whatever papers came in from the Terrestrial Embassy that day, implementing the “program of the week.” Magnan is flat. Retief is three-dimensional.\nMagnan’s main contributions to the story are to: \n1.\tIgnore Retief’s advice to check out the Fustian youth organizations before sponsoring them, which leads to the potential for the Terrestrial Embassy being embarrassed by the Groaci attempts to frame SCARS for the explosion they hoped to cause aboard the Moss Rock. \n2.\tSet up the banquet to honor SCARS where he grossly insults his Fustian counterparts by having the hired musicians play a dirge, the “Lament of Hatching,” and then shattering their ear drums by tapping on his wine glass.\n3.\tWhip up a meringue of obfuscation to hide the fiasco of the youth organization sponsorship program and try to make himself smell like a rose in the process\n4.\tStart a new sponsorship program for Fustian Senior Citizens.\nAt no point in the story does he do anything useful at all.\n",
"Magnan is the Terrestrial Ambassador to the Fustians. He is the figurehead of their influence on the Fustian planet, and works closely with Retief, the Terrestrial diplomat who uncovers a plot against the Terrestrials through the course of the story. He is the man who tries to convince Retief to sponsor the Youth Group SCARS in the beginning of the story, and we encounter him at the banquet near the end of the story. As the figurehead, he is responsible for announcing the role of the Terrestrials in funding the Youth Group, which creates an opportunity for Retief to announce the Grocian plot to everyone. Ambassador Magnan eventually joins Retief and Whonk as they leave the event to stop the criminals, but he is thrown into an alley by Whonk and doesn't have an opportunity to help directly. After the issue is dealt with by Whonk and Retief, Magnan resumes normal duty, and as the story ends he is looking at other groups that his government could potentially fund.\n",
"Magnan is an ambassador with the Terrestrial Embassy, and he assigns Retief the mission to sponsor the new youth movement (SCARS) on the planet Fust. Magnan seems eager for this sponsorship to proceed despite his general ignorance about the movement itself. His motivation for speed rather than understanding may be attributed to the haste with which the Groaci Embassy has moved to establish a connection with SCARS. Magnan, of course, is not aware of the secret dealings between the Groaci and the SCARS, whom they are working with to ultimately supplant the Fustian leadership and take control of the planet for themselves. Magnan’s vision is fairly straightforward and views this sponsorship as the surest way to curry good favor with the Fustians (and get good publicity for the Terrestrial Embassy). Magnan is impatient with Retief’s more meticulous, fact-finding methods and organizes the sponsorship ceremony before Retief has completed his research. At the ceremony, Magnan’s interactions with the Fustian minister reveal further his humorous ignorance about their species, particularly when he hurts their sensitive hearing by banging his glass louder and louder. After he invites Slock on stage to present him to the press as his guest of honor and representative of SCARS, Whonk and Retief capture Slock and expose his plan to Magnan. At first, Magnan does not believe them, but he is quickly convinced when Slock escapes. In the end, Magnan creates a story for the press that the sponsorship event was a ruse to apprehend the perpetrators of the attempted coup against the Fustian leadership. ",
"Magnan is the Ambassador at the Terrestrial Embassy on Fust and Councillor Retief’s boss. He wants Retief to sponsor the SCARS and stops just short of ordering him to do so. Magnan is very focused on his role as Ambassador and has little interest in anything not directly connected to his job. Magnan is not concerned about the passenger ship the Fustians are building or the fact that the Groacis are interested in the Fustians when their lives and economies are so different from each other. When Retief mentions the fact that the Groacis are interested in fission bombs, Magnan’s reaction is to wonder what market there could be for such devices since the world is at peace. He is politically correct and is shocked when Retief mentions the carapaces that the older Fustians has. He also pretends that he can hear the Fustians’ music when he clearly isn’t able to do so. Magnan is manipulative because he announces that Retief will sponsor SCARS even after Retief clearly tells him he is not interested. He misjudges character and refers to Slock as a fine young fellow when Slock is rude, violent, and mixed up in the scheme with the Groacis to begin conquering nearby worlds. At the end of the story when Magnan finally learns of the deceit of the young Fustians and the Groacis, he tries to act like he knew about it all along. His disinterest in anything not related to diplomacy gives Retief the leeway he needs to figure out the Fustian and Groaci crimes."
] |
61198
|
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
AIDE MEMOIRE
BY KEITH LAUMER
The Fustians looked like turtles—but
they could move fast when they chose!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, July 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Across the table from Retief, Ambassador Magnan rustled a stiff sheet
of parchment and looked grave.
"This aide memoire," he said, "was just handed to me by the Cultural
Attache. It's the third on the subject this week. It refers to the
matter of sponsorship of Youth groups—"
"Some youths," Retief said. "Average age, seventy-five."
"The Fustians are a long-lived people," Magnan snapped. "These matters
are relative. At seventy-five, a male Fustian is at a trying age—"
"That's right. He'll try anything—in the hope it will maim somebody."
"Precisely the problem," Magnan said. "But the Youth Movement is
the important news in today's political situation here on Fust. And
sponsorship of Youth groups is a shrewd stroke on the part of the
Terrestrial Embassy. At my suggestion, well nigh every member of the
mission has leaped at the opportunity to score a few p—that is, cement
relations with this emergent power group—the leaders of the future.
You, Retief, as Councillor, are the outstanding exception."
"I'm not convinced these hoodlums need my help in organizing their
rumbles," Retief said. "Now, if you have a proposal for a pest control
group—"
"To the Fustians this is no jesting matter," Magnan cut in. "This
group—" he glanced at the paper—"known as the Sexual, Cultural, and
Athletic Recreational Society, or SCARS for short, has been awaiting
sponsorship for a matter of weeks now."
"Meaning they want someone to buy them a clubhouse, uniforms, equipment
and anything else they need to complete their sexual, cultural and
athletic development," Retief said.
"If we don't act promptly," Magnan said, "the Groaci Embassy may well
anticipate us. They're very active here."
"That's an idea," said Retief. "Let 'em. After awhile they'll go broke
instead of us."
"Nonsense. The group requires a sponsor. I can't actually order you to
step forward. However...." Magnan let the sentence hang in the air.
Retief raised one eyebrow.
"For a minute there," he said, "I thought you were going to make a
positive statement."
Magnan leaned back, lacing his fingers over his stomach. "I don't think
you'll find a diplomat of my experience doing anything so naive," he
said.
"I like the adult Fustians," said Retief. "Too bad they have to lug
half a ton of horn around on their backs. I wonder if surgery would
help."
"Great heavens, Retief," Magnan sputtered. "I'm amazed that even you
would bring up a matter of such delicacy. A race's unfortunate physical
characteristics are hardly a fit matter for Terrestrial curiosity."
"Well, of course your experience of the Fustian mentality is greater
than mine. I've only been here a month. But it's been my experience,
Mr. Ambassador, that few races are above improving on nature. Otherwise
you, for example, would be tripping over your beard."
Magnan shuddered. "Please—never mention the idea to a Fustian."
Retief stood. "My own program for the day includes going over to the
dockyards. There are some features of this new passenger liner the
Fustians are putting together that I want to look into. With your
permission, Mr. Ambassador...?"
Magnan snorted. "Your pre-occupation with the trivial disturbs me,
Retief. More interest in substantive matters—such as working with
Youth groups—would create a far better impression."
"Before getting too involved with these groups, it might be a good idea
to find out a little more about them," said Retief. "Who organizes
them? There are three strong political parties here on Fust. What's the
alignment of this SCARS organization?"
"You forget, these are merely teenagers, so to speak," Magnan said.
"Politics mean nothing to them ... yet."
"Then there are the Groaci. Why their passionate interest in a
two-horse world like Fust? Normally they're concerned with nothing but
business. But what has Fust got that they could use?"
"You may rule out the commercial aspect in this instance," said Magnan.
"Fust possesses a vigorous steel-age manufacturing economy. The Groaci
are barely ahead of them."
"Barely," said Retief. "Just over the line into crude atomics ... like
fission bombs."
Magnan shook his head, turned back to his papers. "What market exists
for such devices on a world at peace? I suggest you address your
attention to the less spectacular but more rewarding work of studying
the social patterns of the local youth."
"I've studied them," said Retief. "And before I meet any of the local
youth socially I want to get myself a good blackjack."
II
Retief left the sprawling bungalow-type building that housed the
chancery of the Terrestrial Embassy, swung aboard a passing flat-car
and leaned back against the wooden guard rail as the heavy vehicle
trundled through the city toward the looming gantries of the shipyards.
It was a cool morning. A light breeze carried the fishy odor of Fusty
dwellings across the broad cobbled avenue. A few mature Fustians
lumbered heavily along in the shade of the low buildings, audibly
wheezing under the burden of their immense carapaces. Among them,
shell-less youths trotted briskly on scaly stub legs. The driver of the
flat-car, a labor-caste Fustian with his guild colors emblazoned on his
back, heaved at the tiller, swung the unwieldy conveyance through the
shipyard gates, creaked to a halt.
"Thus I come to the shipyard with frightful speed," he said in Fustian.
"Well I know the way of the naked-backs, who move always in haste."
Retief climbed down, handed him a coin. "You should take up
professional racing," he said. "Daredevil."
He crossed the littered yard and tapped at the door of a rambling shed.
Boards creaked inside. Then the door swung back.
A gnarled ancient with tarnished facial scales and a weathered carapace
peered out at Retief.
"Long-may-you-sleep," said Retief. "I'd like to take a look around, if
you don't mind. I understand you're laying the bedplate for your new
liner today."
"May-you-dream-of-the-deeps," the old fellow mumbled. He waved a stumpy
arm toward a group of shell-less Fustians standing by a massive hoist.
"The youths know more of bedplates than do I, who but tend the place of
papers."
"I know how you feel, old-timer," said Retief. "That sounds like the
story of my life. Among your papers do you have a set of plans for the
vessel? I understand it's to be a passenger liner."
The oldster nodded. He shuffled to a drawing file, rummaged, pulled out
a sheaf of curled prints and spread them on the table. Retief stood
silently, running a finger over the uppermost drawing, tracing lines....
"What does the naked-back here?" barked a deep voice behind Retief. He
turned. A heavy-faced Fustian youth, wrapped in a mantle, stood at the
open door. Beady yellow eyes set among fine scales bored into Retief.
"I came to take a look at your new liner," said Retief.
"We need no prying foreigners here," the youth snapped. His eye fell on
the drawings. He hissed in sudden anger.
"Doddering hulk!" he snapped at the ancient. "May you toss in
nightmares! Put by the plans!"
"My mistake," Retief said. "I didn't know this was a secret project."
The youth hesitated. "It is not a secret project," he muttered. "Why
should it be secret?"
"You tell me."
The youth worked his jaws and rocked his head from side to side in the
Fusty gesture of uncertainty. "There is nothing to conceal," he said.
"We merely construct a passenger liner."
"Then you don't mind if I look over the drawings," said Retief. "Who
knows? Maybe some day I'll want to reserve a suite for the trip out."
The youth turned and disappeared. Retief grinned at the oldster. "Went
for his big brother, I guess," he said. "I have a feeling I won't get
to study these in peace here. Mind if I copy them?"
"Willingly, light-footed one," said the old Fustian. "And mine is the
shame for the discourtesy of youth."
Retief took out a tiny camera, flipped a copying lens in place, leafed
through the drawings, clicking the shutter.
"A plague on these youths," said the oldster, "who grow more virulent
day by day."
"Why don't you elders clamp down?"
"Agile are they and we are slow of foot. And this unrest is new.
Unknown in my youth was such insolence."
"The police—"
"Bah!" the ancient rumbled. "None have we worthy of the name, nor have
we needed ought ere now."
"What's behind it?"
"They have found leaders. The spiv, Slock, is one. And I fear they plot
mischief." He pointed to the window. "They come, and a Soft One with
them."
Retief pocketed the camera, glanced out the window. A pale-featured
Groaci with an ornately decorated crest stood with the youths, who eyed
the hut, then started toward it.
"That's the military attache of the Groaci Embassy," Retief said. "I
wonder what he and the boys are cooking up together?"
"Naught that augurs well for the dignity of Fust," the oldster rumbled.
"Flee, agile one, while I engage their attentions."
"I was just leaving," Retief said. "Which way out?"
"The rear door," the Fustian gestured with a stubby member. "Rest well,
stranger on these shores." He moved to the entrance.
"Same to you, pop," said Retief. "And thanks."
He eased through the narrow back entrance, waited until voices were
raised at the front of the shed, then strolled off toward the gate.
The second dark of the third cycle was lightening when Retief left the
Embassy technical library and crossed the corridor to his office. He
flipped on a light. A note was tucked under a paperweight:
"Retief—I shall expect your attendance at the IAS dinner at first
dark of the fourth cycle. There will be a brief but, I hope, impressive
Sponsorship ceremony for the SCARS group, with full press coverage,
arrangements for which I have managed to complete in spite of your
intransigence."
Retief snorted and glanced at his watch. Less than three hours. Just
time to creep home by flat-car, dress in ceremonial uniform and creep
back.
Outside he flagged a lumbering bus. He stationed himself in a corner
and watched the yellow sun, Beta, rise rapidly above the low skyline.
The nearby sea was at high tide now, under the pull of the major sun
and the three moons, and the stiff breeze carried a mist of salt spray.
Retief turned up his collar against the dampness. In half an hour he
would be perspiring under the vertical rays of a third-noon sun, but
the thought failed to keep the chill off.
Two Youths clambered up on the platform, moving purposefully toward
Retief. He moved off the rail, watching them, weight balanced.
"That's close enough, kids," he said. "Plenty of room on this scow. No
need to crowd up."
"There are certain films," the lead Fustian muttered. His voice was
unusually deep for a Youth. He was wrapped in a heavy cloak and moved
awkwardly. His adolescence was nearly at an end, Retief guessed.
"I told you once," said Retief. "Don't crowd me."
The two stepped close, slit mouths snapping in anger. Retief put out a
foot, hooked it behind the scaly leg of the overaged juvenile and threw
his weight against the cloaked chest. The clumsy Fustian tottered, fell
heavily. Retief was past him and off the flat-car before the other
Youth had completed his vain lunge toward the spot Retief had occupied.
The Terrestrial waved cheerfully at the pair, hopped aboard another
vehicle, watched his would-be assailants lumber down from their car,
tiny heads twisted to follow his retreating figure.
So they wanted the film? Retief reflected, thumbing a cigar alight.
They were a little late. He had already filed it in the Embassy vault,
after running a copy for the reference files.
And a comparison of the drawings with those of the obsolete Mark XXXV
battle cruiser used two hundred years earlier by the Concordiat Naval
Arm showed them to be almost identical, gun emplacements and all. The
term "obsolete" was a relative one. A ship which had been outmoded in
the armories of the Galactic Powers could still be king of the walk in
the Eastern Arm.
But how had these two known of the film? There had been no one present
but himself and the old-timer—and he was willing to bet the elderly
Fustian hadn't told them anything.
At least not willingly....
Retief frowned, dropped the cigar over the side, waited until the
flat-car negotiated a mud-wallow, then swung down and headed for the
shipyard.
The door, hinges torn loose, had been propped loosely back in position.
Retief looked around at the battered interior of the shed. The old
fellow had put up a struggle.
There were deep drag-marks in the dust behind the building. Retief
followed them across the yard. They disappeared under the steel door of
a warehouse.
Retief glanced around. Now, at the mid-hour of the fourth cycle, the
workmen were heaped along the edge of the refreshment pond, deep in
their siesta. He took a multi-bladed tool from a pocket, tried various
fittings in the lock. It snicked open.
He eased the door aside far enough to enter.
Heaped bales loomed before him. Snapping on the tiny lamp in the handle
of the combination tool, Retief looked over the pile. One stack seemed
out of alignment ... and the dust had been scraped from the floor
before it. He pocketed the light, climbed up on the bales, looked over
into a nest made by stacking the bundles around a clear spot. The aged
Fustian lay in it, on his back, a heavy sack tied over his head.
Retief dropped down inside the ring of bales, sawed at the tough twine
and pulled the sack free.
"It's me, old fellow," Retief said. "The nosy stranger. Sorry I got you
into this."
The oldster threshed his gnarled legs. He rocked slightly and fell
back. "A curse on the cradle that rocked their infant slumbers," he
rumbled. "But place me back on my feet and I hunt down the youth,
Slock, though he flee to the bottommost muck of the Sea of Torments."
"How am I going to get you out of here? Maybe I'd better get some help."
"Nay. The perfidious Youths abound here," said the old Fustian. "It
would be your life."
"I doubt if they'd go that far."
"Would they not?" The Fustian stretched his neck. "Cast your light
here. But for the toughness of my hide...."
Retief put the beam of the light on the leathery neck. A great smear of
thick purplish blood welled from a ragged cut. The oldster chuckled, a
sound like a seal coughing.
"Traitor, they called me. For long they sawed at me—in vain. Then
they trussed me and dumped me here. They think to return with weapons
to complete the task."
"Weapons? I thought it was illegal!"
"Their evil genius, the Soft One," said the Fustian. "He would provide
fuel to the Devil himself."
"The Groaci again," said Retief. "I wonder what their angle is."
"And I must confess, I told them of you, ere I knew their full
intentions. Much can I tell you of their doings. But first, I pray, the
block and tackle."
Retief found the hoist where the Fustian directed him, maneuvered it
into position, hooked onto the edge of the carapace and hauled away.
The immense Fustian rose slowly, teetered ... then flopped on his chest.
Slowly he got to his feet.
"My name is Whonk, fleet one," he said. "My cows are yours."
"Thanks. I'm Retief. I'd like to meet the girls some time. But right
now, let's get out of here."
Whonk leaned his bulk against the ponderous stacks of baled kelp,
bulldozed them aside. "Slow am I to anger," he said, "but implacable in
my wrath. Slock, beware!"
"Hold it," said Retief suddenly. He sniffed. "What's that odor?" He
flashed the light around, played it over a dry stain on the floor. He
knelt, sniffed at the spot.
"What kind of cargo was stacked here, Whonk? And where is it now?"
Whonk considered. "There were drums," he said. "Four of them, quite
small, painted an evil green, the property of the Soft Ones, the
Groaci. They lay here a day and a night. At full dark of the first
period they came with stevedores and loaded them aboard the barge
Moss
Rock
."
"The VIP boat. Who's scheduled to use it?"
"I know not. But what matters this? Let us discuss cargo movements
after I have settled a score with certain Youths."
"We'd better follow this up first, Whonk. There's only one substance I
know of that's transported in drums and smells like that blot on the
floor. That's titanite: the hottest explosive this side of a uranium
pile."
III
Beta was setting as Retief, Whonk puffing at his heels, came up to the
sentry box beside the gangway leading to the plush interior of the
official luxury space barge
Moss Rock
.
"A sign of the times," said Whonk, glancing inside the empty shelter.
"A guard should stand here, but I see him not. Doubtless he crept away
to sleep."
"Let's go aboard and take a look around."
They entered the ship. Soft lights glowed in utter silence. A rough box
stood on the floor, rollers and pry-bars beside it—a discordant note
in the muted luxury of the setting. Whonk rummaged in it.
"Curious," he said. "What means this?" He held up a stained cloak of
orange and green, a metal bracelet, papers.
"Orange and green," mused Relief. "Whose colors are those?"
"I know not." Whonk glanced at the arm-band. "But this is lettered." He
passed the metal band to Retief.
"SCARS," Retief read. He looked at Whonk. "It seems to me I've heard
the name before," he murmured. "Let's get back to the Embassy—fast."
Back on the ramp Retief heard a sound ... and turned in time to duck
the charge of a hulking Fustian youth who thundered past him and
fetched up against the broad chest of Whonk, who locked him in a warm
embrace.
"Nice catch, Whonk. Where'd he sneak out of?"
"The lout hid there by the storage bin," rumbled Whonk. The captive
youth thumped fists and toes fruitlessly against the oldster's carapace.
"Hang onto him," said Retief. "He looks like the biting kind."
"No fear. Clumsy I am, yet not without strength."
"Ask him where the titanite is tucked away."
"Speak, witless grub," growled Whonk, "lest I tweak you in twain."
The youth gurgled.
"Better let up before you make a mess of him," said Retief. Whonk
lifted the Youth clear of the floor, then flung him down with a thump
that made the ground quiver. The younger Fustian glared up at the
elder, mouth snapping.
"This one was among those who trussed me and hid me away for the
killing," said Whonk. "In his repentance he will tell all to his elder."
"That's the same young squirt that tried to strike up an acquaintance
with me on the bus," Retief said. "He gets around."
The youth scrambled to hands and knees, scuttled for freedom. Retief
planted a foot on his dragging cloak; it ripped free. He stared at the
bare back of the Fustian—
"By the Great Egg!" Whonk exclaimed, tripping the refugee as he tried
to rise. "This is no Youth! His carapace has been taken from him!"
Retief looked at the scarred back. "I thought he looked a little old.
But I thought—"
"This is not possible," Whonk said wonderingly. "The great nerve trunks
are deeply involved. Not even the cleverest surgeon could excise the
carapace and leave the patient living."
"It looks like somebody did the trick. But let's take this boy with us
and get out of here. His folks may come home."
"Too late," said Whonk. Retief turned.
Three youths came from behind the sheds.
"Well," Retief said. "It looks like the SCARS are out in force tonight.
Where's your pal?" he said to the advancing trio. "The sticky little
bird with the eye-stalks? Back at his Embassy, leaving you suckers
holding the bag, I'll bet."
"Shelter behind me, Retief," said Whonk.
"Go get 'em, old-timer." Retief stooped, picked up one of the pry-bars.
"I'll jump around and distract them."
Whonk let out a whistling roar and charged for the immature Fustians.
They fanned out ... and one tripped, sprawled on his face. Retief
whirled the metal bar he had thrust between the Fustian's legs, slammed
it against the skull of another, who shook his head, turned on
Retief ... and bounced off the steel hull of the
Moss Rock
as Whonk
took him in full charge.
Retief used the bar on another head. His third blow laid the Fustian
on the pavement, oozing purple. The other two club members departed
hastily, seriously dented but still mobile.
Retief leaned on his club, breathing hard. "Tough heads these kids
have got. I'm tempted to chase those two lads down, but I've got
another errand to run. I don't know who the Groaci intended to blast,
but I have a sneaking suspicion somebody of importance was scheduled
for a boat ride in the next few hours. And three drums of titanite is
enough to vaporize this tub and everyone aboard her."
"The plot is foiled," said Whonk. "But what reason did they have?"
"The Groaci are behind it. I have an idea the SCARS didn't know about
this gambit."
"Which of these is the leader?" asked Whonk. He prodded a fallen Youth
with a horny toe. "Arise, dreaming one."
"Never mind him, Whonk. We'll tie these two up and leave them here. I
know where to find the boss."
A stolid crowd filled the low-ceilinged banquet hall. Retief scanned
the tables for the pale blobs of Terrestrial faces, dwarfed by the
giant armored bodies of the Fustians. Across the room Magnan fluttered
a hand. Retief headed toward him. A low-pitched vibration filled the
air: the rumble of subsonic Fustian music.
Retief slid into his place beside Magnan. "Sorry to be late, Mr.
Ambassador."
"I'm honored that you chose to appear at all," said Magnan coldly. He
turned back to the Fustian on his left.
"Ah, yes, Mr. Minister," he said. "Charming, most charming. So joyous."
The Fustian looked at him, beady-eyed. "It is the
Lament of
Hatching
," he said; "our National Dirge."
"Oh," said Magnan. "How interesting. Such a pleasing balance of
instruments—"
"It is a droon solo," said the Fustian, eyeing the Terrestrial
Ambassador suspiciously.
"Why don't you just admit you can't hear it," Retief whispered loudly.
"And if I may interrupt a moment—"
Magnan cleared his throat. "Now that our Mr. Retief has arrived,
perhaps we could rush right along to the Sponsorship ceremonies."
"This group," said Retief, leaning across Magnan, "the SCARS. How much
do you know about them, Mr. Minister?"
"Nothing at all," the huge Fustian elder rumbled. "For my taste, all
Youths should be kept penned with the livestock until they grow a
carapace to tame their irresponsibility."
"We mustn't lose sight of the importance of channeling youthful
energies," said Magnan.
"Labor gangs," said the minister. "In my youth we were indentured to
the dredge-masters. I myself drew a muck sledge."
"But in these modern times," put in Magnan, "surely it's incumbent on
us to make happy these golden hours."
The minister snorted. "Last week I had a golden hour. They set upon me
and pelted me with overripe stench-fruit."
"But this was merely a manifestation of normal youthful frustrations,"
cried Magnan. "Their essential tenderness—"
"You'd not find a tender spot on that lout yonder," the minister
said, pointing with a fork at a newly arrived Youth, "if you drilled
boreholes and blasted."
"Why, that's our guest of honor," said Magnan, "a fine young fellow!
Slop I believe his name is."
"Slock," said Retief. "Eight feet of armor-plated orneriness. And—"
Magnan rose and tapped on his glass. The Fustians winced at the, to
them, supersonic vibrations. They looked at each other muttering.
Magnan tapped louder. The Minister drew in his head, eyes closed. Some
of the Fustians rose, tottered for the doors; the noise level rose.
Magnan redoubled his efforts. The glass broke with a clatter and green
wine gushed on the tablecloth.
"What in the name of the Great Egg!" the Minister muttered. He blinked,
breathing deeply.
"Oh, forgive me," blurted Magnan, dabbing at the wine.
"Too bad the glass gave out," said Retief. "In another minute you'd
have cleared the hall. And then maybe I could have gotten a word in
sideways. There's a matter you should know about—"
"Your attention, please," Magnan said, rising. "I see that our fine
young guest has arrived, and I hope that the remainder of his committee
will be along in a moment. It is my pleasure to announce that our Mr.
Retief has had the good fortune to win out in the keen bidding for the
pleasure of sponsoring this lovely group."
Retief tugged at Magnan's sleeve. "Don't introduce me yet," he said. "I
want to appear suddenly. More dramatic, you know."
"Well," murmured Magnan, glancing down at Retief, "I'm gratified to
see you entering into the spirit of the event at last." He turned his
attention back to the assembled guests. "If our honored guest will join
me on the rostrum...?" he said. "The gentlemen of the press may want to
catch a few shots of the presentation."
Magnan stepped up on the low platform at the center of the wide room,
took his place beside the robed Fustian youth and beamed at the cameras.
"How gratifying it is to take this opportunity to express once more the
great pleasure we have in sponsoring SCARS," he said, talking slowly
for the benefit of the scribbling reporters. "We'd like to think that
in our modest way we're to be a part of all that the SCARS achieve
during the years ahead."
Magnan paused as a huge Fustian elder heaved his bulk up the two low
steps to the rostrum, approached the guest of honor. He watched as the
newcomer paused behind Slock, who did not see the new arrival.
Retief pushed through the crowd, stepped up to face the Fustian youth.
Slock stared at him, drew back.
"You know me, Slock," said Retief loudly. "An old fellow named Whonk
told you about me, just before you tried to saw his head off, remember?
It was when I came out to take a look at that battle cruiser you're
building."
IV
With a bellow Slock reached for Retief—and choked off in mid-cry as
the Fustian elder, Whonk, pinioned him from behind, lifting him clear
of the floor.
"Glad you reporters happened along," said Retief to the gaping newsmen.
"Slock here had a deal with a sharp operator from the Groaci Embassy.
The Groaci were to supply the necessary hardware and Slock, as foreman
at the shipyards, was to see that everything was properly installed.
The next step, I assume, would have been a local take-over, followed
by a little interplanetary war on Flamenco or one of the other nearby
worlds ... for which the Groaci would be glad to supply plenty of ammo."
Magnan found his tongue. "Are you mad, Retief?" he screeched. "This
group was vouched for by the Ministry of Youth!"
"The Ministry's overdue for a purge," snapped Retief. He turned back
to Slock. "I wonder if you were in on the little diversion that was
planned for today. When the
Moss Rock
blew, a variety of clues were
to be planted where they'd be easy to find ... with SCARS written all
over them. The Groaci would thus have neatly laid the whole affair
squarely at the door of the Terrestrial Embassy ... whose sponsorship
of the SCARS had received plenty of publicity."
"The
Moss Rock
?" said Magnan. "But that was—Retief! This is idiotic.
Slock himself was scheduled to go on a cruise tomorrow!"
Slock roared suddenly, twisting violently. Whonk teetered, his grip
loosened ... and Slock pulled free and was off the platform, butting
his way through the milling oldsters on the dining room floor. Magnan
watched, open-mouthed.
"The Groaci were playing a double game, as usual," Retief said. "They
intended to dispose of this fellow Slock, once he'd served their
purpose."
"Well, don't stand there," yelped Magnan over the uproar. "If Slock is
the ring-leader of a delinquent gang...!" He moved to give chase.
Retief grabbed his arm. "Don't jump down there! You'd have as much
chance of getting through as a jack-rabbit through a threshing contest."
Ten minutes later the crowd had thinned slightly. "We can get through
now," Whonk called. "This way." He lowered himself to the floor, bulled
through to the exit. Flashbulbs popped. Retief and Magnan followed in
Whonk's wake.
In the lounge Retief grabbed the phone, waited for the operator, gave a
code letter. No reply. He tried another.
"No good," he said after a full minute had passed. "Wonder what's
loose?" He slammed the phone back in its niche. "Let's grab a cab."
In the street the blue sun, Alpha, peered like an arc light under a low
cloud layer, casting flat shadows across the mud of the avenue. The
three mounted a passing flat-car. Whonk squatted, resting the weight of
his immense shell on the heavy plank flooring.
"Would that I too could lose this burden, as has the false youth we
bludgeoned aboard the
Moss Rock
," he sighed. "Soon will I be forced
into retirement. Then a mere keeper of a place of papers such as I
will rate no more than a slab on the public strand, with once-daily
feedings. And even for a man of high position, retirement is no
pleasure. A slab in the Park of Monuments is little better. A dismal
outlook for one's next thousand years!"
"You two carry on to the police station," said Retief. "I want to play
a hunch. But don't take too long. I may be painfully right."
"What—?" Magnan started.
"As you wish, Retief," said Whonk.
The flat-car trundled past the gate to the shipyard and Retief jumped
down, headed at a run for the VIP boat. The guard post still stood
vacant. The two Youths whom he and Whonk had left trussed were gone.
"That's the trouble with a peaceful world," Retief muttered. "No police
protection." He stepped down from the lighted entry and took up a
position behind the sentry box. Alpha rose higher, shedding a glaring
blue-white light without heat. Retief shivered. Maybe he'd guessed
wrong....
There was a sound in the near distance, like two elephants colliding.
Retief looked toward the gate. His giant acquaintance, Whonk, had
reappeared and was grappling with a hardly less massive opponent. A
small figure became visible in the melee, scuttled for the gate. Headed
off by the battling titans, he turned and made for the opposite side
of the shipyard. Retief waited, jumped out and gathered in the fleeing
Groaci.
"Well, Yith," he said, "how's tricks? You should pardon the expression."
"Release me, Retief!" the pale-featured alien lisped, his throat
bladder pulsating in agitation. "The behemoths vie for the privilege of
dismembering me out of hand!"
"I know how they feel. I'll see what I can do ... for a price."
"I appeal to you," Yith whispered hoarsely. "As a fellow diplomat, a
fellow alien, a fellow soft-back—"
"Why don't you appeal to Slock, as a fellow skunk?" said Retief. "Now
keep quiet ... and you may get out of this alive."
The heavier of the two struggling Fustians threw the other to the
ground. There was another brief flurry, and then the smaller figure was
on its back, helpless.
"That's Whonk, still on his feet," said Retief. "I wonder who he's
caught—and why."
Whonk came toward the
Moss Rock
dragging the supine Fustian, who
kicked vainly. Retief thrust Yith down well out of sight behind the
sentry box. "Better sit tight, Yith. Don't try to sneak off; I can
outrun you. Stay here and I'll see what I can do." He stepped out and
hailed Whonk.
Puffing like a steam engine Whonk pulled up before him. "Sleep,
Retief!" He panted. "You followed a hunch; I did the same. I saw
something strange in this one when we passed him on the avenue. I
watched, followed him here. Look! It is Slock, strapped into a dead
carapace! Now many things become clear."
Retief whistled. "So the Youths aren't all as young as they look.
Somebody's been holding out on the rest of you Fustians!"
"The Soft One," Whonk said. "You laid him by the heels, Retief. I saw.
Produce him now."
"Hold on a minute, Whonk. It won't do you any good—"
Whonk winked broadly. "I must take my revenge!" he roared. "I shall
test the texture of the Soft One! His pulped remains will be scoured up
by the ramp-washers and mailed home in bottles!"
Retief whirled at a sound, caught up with the scuttling Yith fifty feet
away, hauled him back to Whonk.
"It's up to you, Whonk," he said. "I know how important ceremonial
revenge is to you Fustians. I will not interfere."
"Mercy!" Yith hissed, eye-stalks whipping in distress. "I claim
diplomatic immunity!"
"No diplomat am I," rumbled Whonk. "Let me see; suppose I start with
one of those obscenely active eyes—" He reached....
"I have an idea," said Retief brightly. "Do you suppose—just this
once—you could forego the ceremonial revenge if Yith promised to
arrange for a Groaci Surgical Mission to de-carapace you elders?"
"But," Whonk protested, "those eyes! What a pleasure to pluck them, one
by one!"
"Yess," hissed Yith, "I swear it! Our most expert surgeons ... platoons
of them, with the finest of equipment."
"I have dreamed of how it would be to sit on this one, to feel him
squash beneath my bulk...."
"Light as a whissle feather shall you dance," Yith whispered.
"Shell-less shall you spring in the joy of renewed youth—"
"Maybe just one eye," said Whonk grudgingly. "That would leave him
four."
"Be a sport," said Retief.
"Well."
"It's a deal then," said Retief. "Yith, on your word as a diplomat,
an alien, a soft-back and a skunk, you'll set up the mission. Groaci
surgical skill is an export that will net you more than armaments.
It will be a whissle feather in your cap—if you bring it off. And
in return, Whonk won't sit on you. And I won't prefer charges of
interference in the internal affairs of a free world."
Behind Whonk there was a movement. Slock, wriggling free of the
borrowed carapace, struggled to his feet ... in time for Whonk to seize
him, lift him high and head for the entry to the
Moss Rock
.
"Hey," Retief called. "Where are you going?"
"I would not deny this one his reward," called Whonk. "He hoped to
cruise in luxury. So be it."
"Hold on," said Retief. "That tub is loaded with titanite!"
"Stand not in my way, Retief. For this one in truth owes me a
vengeance."
Retief watched as the immense Fustian bore his giant burden up the ramp
and disappeared within the ship.
"I guess Whonk means business," he said to Yith, who hung in his grasp,
all five eyes goggling. "And he's a little too big for me to stop."
Whonk reappeared, alone, climbed down.
"What did you do with him?" said Retief. "Tell him you were going to—"
"We had best withdraw," said Whonk. "The killing radius of the drive is
fifty yards."
"You mean—"
"The controls are set for Groaci. Long-may-he-sleep."
"It was quite a bang," said Retief. "But I guess you saw it, too."
"No, confound it," Magnan said. "When I remonstrated with Hulk, or
Whelk—"
"Whonk."
"—the ruffian thrust me into an alley bound in my own cloak. I'll most
certainly complain to the Minister."
"How about the surgical mission?"
"A most generous offer," said Magnan. "Frankly, I was astonished. I
think perhaps we've judged the Groaci too harshly."
"I hear the Ministry of Youth has had a rough morning of it," said
Retief. "And a lot of rumors are flying to the effect that Youth Groups
are on the way out."
Magnan cleared his throat, shuffled papers. "I—ah—have explained to
the press that last night's—ah—"
"Fiasco."
"—affair was necessary in order to place the culprits in an untenable
position. Of course, as to the destruction of the VIP vessel and the
presumed death of, uh, Slop."
"The Fustians understand," said Retief. "Whonk wasn't kidding about
ceremonial vengeance."
"The Groaci had been guilty of gross misuse of diplomatic privilege,"
said Magnan. "I think that a note—or perhaps an Aide Memoire: less
formal...."
"The
Moss Rock
was bound for Groaci," said Retief. "She was already
in her transit orbit when she blew. The major fragments will arrive on
schedule in a month or so. It should provide quite a meteorite display.
I think that should be all the
aide
the Groaci's
memoires
will need
to keep their tentacles off Fust."
"But diplomatic usage—"
"Then, too, the less that's put in writing, the less they can blame you
for, if anything goes wrong."
"That's true," said Magnan, lips pursed. "Now you're thinking
constructively, Retief. We may make a diplomat of you yet." He smiled
expansively.
"Maybe. But I refuse to let it depress me." Retief stood up. "I'm
taking a few weeks off ... if you have no objection, Mr. Ambassador. My
pal Whonk wants to show me an island down south where the fishing is
good."
"But there are some extremely important matters coming up," said
Magnan. "We're planning to sponsor Senior Citizen Groups—"
"Count me out. All groups give me an itch."
"Why, what an astonishing remark, Retief! After all, we diplomats are
ourselves a group."
"Uh-huh," Retief said.
Magnan sat quietly, mouth open, and watched as Retief stepped into the
hall and closed the door gently behind him.
|
What is the significance of Janis's character on the rest of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Plague by Teddy Keller.
Relevant chunks:
THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
Question:
What is the significance of Janis's character on the rest of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"In short, without Janis, Sergeant Andrew McCloud would not have discovered the cause of the epidemic as quickly or at all. \n\tNear the end of the story, Janis, an attractive blonde woman, enters Sergeant Andy’s office to deliver another stack of reports before him and Corporal Bettijean. The two of them had been analyzing the reports and statistics for several hours now, desperate to find a trend amongst those infected. So far, they had come up with nothing concrete, except for the types of people who were getting infected. Working people, artists, poets, newly engaged women, and small office workers were all turning up sick. Bigger offices, postal workers, doctors, dentists, and government workers were all fine. So, what’s the connection? \n\tAfter nervously delivering the reports, Janis quickly scurries out of the office and back to her desk elsewhere. Bettijean and Andy notice that the adult population in Aspen, Colorado; Taos; and Santa Fe, New Mexico is rapidly falling ill, all towns with prominent artistic industries. \n\tThey keep pouring over the reports, making new discoveries but still not coming up with any answers. Suddenly, a girl cries out from beyond his office. They hear a body fall to the floor, and they quickly rush out as the sounds of screaming emerge. Andy sends Bettijean to retrieve a doctor and a chemist, while he runs to help. Janis was lying on the floor, in pain and scared. Luckily, the virus is not contagious, so Andy and the others were able to help her. \n\tAndy interrogates her, asking detailed questions about her day and the past 12 hours. He tries to ascertain all the moments of her life, so he can pinpoint where and how she got infected. Her symptoms match up with the epidemic at hand (a fever and feeling dizzy), so Andy knows this is his best shot to find the origin. \n\tSlowly, she recounts her day and tells them all about what she did, where she was, and what she ate. She hides one thing though, which Andy quickly forces out of her. She wrote a letter to her mother, telling her about the epidemic and how scary it was. This is against regulations, as shown through Andy’s grunt of disapproval. She mailed it with her own stamps, not with a government envelope. \n\tAndy puts all the puzzle pieces together in his mind and realizes that all those people, Janis included, had one thing in common: writing letters. The poison was in the stamp. Without Janis, Andy would have struggled far longer to discover the illness and halt the production and sale of all stamps nationwide. \n\t\n",
"Janis is the first person to fall sick with the mysterious disease in the Office of Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection. She had been one of the people delivering reports to Andy’s office, and head seemed nervous when she had entered last. She had fallen at her desk, and was shivering and horrified at what had happened. Once she was able to talk with Andy, he was able to ask her questions about her day. This was important because Andy had not yet found a connection that tied the victims of the epidemic together. He insisted that he tell her everything, and the fact that she sent a letter to her mother was the crucial fact that allowed Andy to put the story together. He was able to have Janis’ postage stamps tested for a toxin on the glued side, allowing him to finally find the root of the sickness and start the nationwide response, including giving the lab enough information to find out what was needed for a treatment. ",
"Janis is the phone operator who falls ill as they are working to solve the mystery of the pandemic. She becomes the key to unlocking the mystery as she describes her day to Andy. She informs him that she sent a letter to her mother earlier in the day. This, along with the trends that are becoming apparent in the sick populations allows Andy to deduce that licking stamp adhesive is what is making people sick.",
"Janis is the first person in McCloud’s office to become sick. First, she comes in to give him a report, and she fidgets and moves like she is nervous. Only a few minutes later, she collapses in the hallway. She is feverish and dizzy. \n\nWhen McCloud pressures her to tell him everything that she has consumed and done in the last day or so, Janis admits that she broke government regulations when she mailed a letter to her mother that detailed the epidemic. McCloud points out that she hardly let out a secret. The news of the epidemic has spread far and wide at this point. \n\nHe contemplates her story for several minutes and realizes that in order to send the letter, Janis must have licked a stamp. Janis’s illness turned out to be the essential clue. Without her explanation of the steps she took before she became sick, McCloud would not have the information he needed to solve the puzzle. \n"
] |
30062
|
THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
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What happens to Sergeant Andy McCloud throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Plague by Teddy Keller.
Relevant chunks:
THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
Question:
What happens to Sergeant Andy McCloud throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Ten days prior to the epidemic, Colonel Patterson retired. He was Sergeant Andy McCloud’s superior, and his replacement has yet to show up. Andy theorizes that the replacement for the lieutenant got caught up in all the red tape, but, at the end of the day, the newly-coined Germ War Protection needed a leader. And Andy was stepping up to the job. \n\tHe had worked at the Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Coordinator for two years prior to the epidemic. He knew the ins and outs of the place, so, despite being a noncom, he was truly the best for the job. \n\tOne of his colleagues, Corporal Bettijean Baker, had picked up the phone two days prior, and suddenly their whole words changed. An epidemic was sweeping the nation, infecting random people left and right with no underlying cause or trend, and, despite the absence of fatalities, panic was ensuing. Though some of the officers disapprove of Andy’s noncom position, he continues working tirelessly with his colleagues to try and figure out the cause of this terrifying disease. \n\tHe and Corporal Bettijean Baker brainstorm throughout the story, desperately searching for a trend or place of infection. They realize that artists, poets, college students, and workers are the ones being infected; not necessarily doctors, dentists, and government employees. They try to figure out what activities each group does that could possibly have been the cause of their infection. They quickly rule out the disease traveling through water, wind, and food. And, later on, it’s revealed that the disease is not contagious. Bettijean and Andy put their heads together and think. \n\tTheir time spent together brainstorming was also filled with flirtatious moments. Andy, with his freckles and messy hair, and Bettijean with her jet-black hair, share a kiss or two throughout the story. \n\tAfter exhausting themselves, Andy orders all the girls to redirect all calls to go out, not in. They are to focus on hospitals and relief crews, to discover more on who the virus is infecting. He and Bettijean are almost fired by the disgruntled colonel, who came with two replacements. Thankfully, just as Andy kisses Bettijean, the general walks in and dismisses the colonel. He reinstates Andy and Bettijean to their former and rightful positions, before telling them that the Iron Curtain has gone silent, except for one coded message from two days before, possibly hinting at the epidemic. \n\tAfter the brass left, Bettijean and Andy brainstormed some more, looking through new reports brought in by Janis, a colleague. Janis soon collapses, and it is revealed that she’s been infected. Andy questions her and soon discovers the transmitter of the virus. Stamps! He relates the news to his higher-ups, and rejoices with Bettijean. They are given a 30-day furloughed vacation together, leaving the reader with a future of romance and hope. \n",
"Sergeant Andy McCloud was the highest-ranking officer in the Office of Civil Health and Germ Warfare protection when the retired Co-ordinator’s replacement didn’t show up, so he found himself in charge of the office just as a nationwide epidemic was surging. He is berated by some of his superior officers who couldn’t fathom the idea of an officer not in a combat role being in charge of such a large issue, but pushed through and continued trying to work on a solution. He goes through piles of reports with Corporal Bettijean Baker, his assistant, trying to find something that connects the victims. The two of them work through a variety of emotions, including frustration, exhaustion, confusion, and exasperation. When the colonel comes back into Andy’s office to yell more about the severity of the situation that he doesn’t seem to think Andy is the right person to handle, Andy acknowledges him curtly, which makes the colonel relieve Andy of his duties. This whole time, Bettiejean is standing with him, gripping his shoulder in his defense. The threat doesn’t stick, even though Andy was somewhat relieved to have a chance to sleep, as a captain walks in and tells him to continue working. The captain tells the colonel that he and his captains have to report to Andy for the remainder of the crisis. During each of these interactions with superior officers, Andy relies on smoking a cigarette to find some focus, and tries to listen to the captain’s report about possible influence from the Soviet Union. He is upset, and in his exhaustion, loses hope for a moment as the general asks him what Andy can do about the situation, but then finds the courage to stand up and say that he’ll get the job done as long as people work with him on it. He worked through more reports with Bettijean until they were interrupted by a scream as Janis, one of the office workers, fell sick at her desk. Andy called for a doctor and a chemist, asked Janis everything that had happened to her that day, and pondered over the new evidence over another cigarette. He has an epiphany, frantically looks for Janis’ book of stamps in her purse, and sends a stamp with a lab technician. His hunch was right: the toxin that spreads the disease is on the adhesive side of the stamps. As he works on a response plan with the general, he calls out a few orders and then defers to the general to make the rest of the decisions in his exhaustion. The general then offers Andy and Bettiejean a month of furlough so that they can spend time with one another, and they look into each other’s eyes excited to explore their connection. ",
"Andy begins the story as a non-commissioned officer running the Germ Warfare Protection division during a crisis. He was never assigned a commanding officer after his previous colonel's retirement 10 days prior. As a result he continually has to defend his standing and prove that he is the right individual to solve the mystery of the illness.\n\nHe works doggedly to try and establish a pattern or trend for the illness and calls tirelessly every hospital in the country until his hand cramps from writing and his voice verges on giving out.\n\nHe has to navigate an attempted takeover by the chicken colonel and his young officers. Eventually he pieces the mystery together by speaking to Janis, a phone operator who falls ill after licking a stamp. Finally he provides his recommendation on how to stop the illness and is rewarded with a long vacation and promotion.\n\n",
"Andy has been working at the Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection for two years when all hell breaks loose. He is put in charge of finding out how the new American plague is spreading, and he is deeply stressed. Chicken colonel attempts to discipline him for insubordination, but the two star general shoots down that idea and asks McCloud to keep working the case with everything he’s got.\n\nMcCloud and Bettlejean look through reports and gather that the disease is not communicable, and it is not only affecting people of a certain class or geographical area. The only clues that they can piece together are that the illness is affecting people who work in small offices rather than large buildings. They also recognize that artists and poets are becoming sick when doctors and dentists are not. \n\nMcCloud’s subordinate, a woman named Janis, suddenly becomes ill. After he questions her about her day and activities, he realizes that the culprit behind the outbreak must be postage stamps. He locates one of the stamps that Janis had in her work desk and sends it to be tested in the lab. \n\nWhen his boss, the general, comes in to hear about McCloud’s findings, he says with confidence that the postage stamps are behind the epidemic. When the lab confirms his suspicions, he is hailed as the hero. The general gives him time off to relax and recuperate from this entire ordeal, and he suggests that McCloud spend some of that time with Bettlejean. McCloud is so excited to get some alone time with his coworker that he barely hears the general detail the awards and accolades that McCloud will receive for his job well done. \n\n"
] |
30062
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THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
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Describe the relationship between Corporal Bettiejean and Sergeant Andy.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Plague by Teddy Keller.
Relevant chunks:
THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
Question:
Describe the relationship between Corporal Bettiejean and Sergeant Andy.
Answer:
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[
"Sergeant Andrew McCloud is Corporal Bettijean Baker’s superior, both in rank and position at the Germ War office. They have worked together before, perhaps for the two years that Andy has been stationed there. Their relationship ranges from colleagues to lovers, sharing kisses at work or gentle shoulder touches, while still maintaining a professional atmosphere. \n\tThey begin the story extremely stressed, due to the sudden epidemic, and use their combined brain power to find the root cause of the disease. After hours of working together and defending each other to their higher-ups, they are able to identify different groups of people that have been infected, all of which are random and don’t show a clear trend. After the truth is discovered, that the disease is being spread through licking stamps, Corporal Bettijean and Sergeant Andrew are granted a 30-day vacation together, with the promises of getting to know each other better. They accept gratefully, and stare into each other’s eyes. \n\tThough their relationship may be inappropriate in the modern office, it’s clear through their constant defense of the other and dedication to the cause, that their romance is just as strong as their professional relationship. \n",
"Corporal Bettiejean and Sergeant Andy are colleagues at the Office of Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection. When Andy is suddenly in charge as the Co-ordinator of the office, Bettiejean is his assistant. The two of them work together to comb through the reports about various aspects of infrastructure that could be responsible for the transmission of the epidemic. Part of this process involves a lot of brainstorming, and throwing ideas back and forth about what the problem could be. When their superior officers come by, and the colonel starts yelling at Andy, Bettiejean defends him and tries to make the colonel realize his rude behavior is entirely unhelpful, which is eventually escalated into an emotional discussion as her grip on Andy’s shoulder grows tighter. She supports him in other ways, too, including handing Andy a match when he tries to light a cigarette, which he does often. The two of them kept the hope for a solution in mind as they worked through more piles of reports, and when Andy develops his theory about the postage stamps being the culprit, it is Bettijean that he sends to call in their superiors. She comes into his office to check on him, and is there while Andy explains that they have a solution. Apparently their interactions have been visible to the rest of the staff in the office, as the general gives them a month of furlough after the root of the problem has been identified, teasing them a bit about the chance to get to know each other. As the story ends, they are looking into each other’s eyes longingly, ready to take the month off. ",
"Bettijean and Andy are in a professional relationship with Andy as Bettijean's superior. They are also on close personal terms with romantic overtones.\n\nAs the crisis intensifies, Andy and Bettijean work together to pour through the details of the illness. They view each other as a team although with Bettijean clearly subordinate to Andy. She follows Andy's orders but is also valued for her contribution and viewed as an equal.\n\nAs the crisis is averted, the pair are rewarded with a vacation furlough and pending promotion. The pair are only excited about the furlough and it is implied that they will spend it together as lovers. ",
"Corporal Bettlejean and Sargeant McCloud have a friendly and important relationship. Bettlejean shows her intense interest in McCloud when she checks in on him about how he’s feeling and how their colleagues are treating him. She tries her best to help Andy in his work and set him up to be successful at his job. When McCloud wants to fire back at colonel chicken for what he sees as mistreatment, Bettlejean gently reminds him to keep his composure with only a small and silent gesture. \n\nMcCloud looks at the various groups of people who have come down with the sickness and compares them to those that are fine, and he realizes that the illness is most likely caused by licking postage stamps. Bettlejean beams with pride as he makes his announcement. She is not jealous of his sharp wit and hard work. She supports his reasoning and immediately congratulates him on his brilliant idea. \n\nThroughout the story, McCloud and Bettlejean work together to solve the mystery, and they are quietly flirtatious, even in front of their coworkers. It is clear that the general has picked up on their attraction to one another when he suggests that they use their much deserved time off to get to know each other better. The two confirm that they will in fact be seeing more of each other when they hold hands at the news. \n\n"
] |
30062
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THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
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What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Plague by Teddy Keller.
Relevant chunks:
THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The Plague takes place in the modern United States of America. The story follows several government workers as they navigate a sudden and mysterious epidemic. Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud, mostly referred to as Andy, works at the Office of the Civil Health and Germ Welfare Protection located in the Pentagon. Corporal Bettijean Baker, his right-hand woman and new lover, picks up the phone one day, and then chaos ensues. \nA switchboard is put in the hallway to help receive the hundreds of calls being made to their office. This sudden influx of calls, attention, people, and disease leave the main characters feeling overwhelmed and desperate. \nSince the new lieutenant had not arrived (post Colonel Patterson’s retirement), Sergeant Andy is effectively in charge as a noncom, though not everyone is happy about that. Andy pushes their worries aside, and continues working. \nDespite the spread, no fatalities have been reported, and infections are random. No trend has been established yet, but they are searching desperately for one. Bettijean goes through reports with Sergeant Andy, revealing all she’s uncovered. It’s affecting workers, artists, and poets, but not necessarily those who work in government, or as doctors or businessmen. The water systems are ruled out, as well as wind and food. Bettijean and Andy are left with nothing, except the possibility of biological terrorism. \nFinally, Andy orders Bettijean to halt all in-coming calls, and redirect their attention to all hospitals. \nDespite their best efforts, no conclusion can be reached. The colonel reappears in Andy’s office, followed by two officers. He throws a newspaper down on his desk, proclaiming that this epidemic was allegedly caused by the Russians, and that all the authorities are baffled. It is hinted that the Colonel commissioned this article to throw doubt on Andy’s authority. Andy defends his employees and the work they’ve been doing. The Colonel forces Andy and Bettijean out of office, and Andy lets him, kissing Bettijean on the way out. Suddenly, the general walks in and gives Andy back his job, while telling him the news from Intelligence. The Iron Curtain’s not sent word for almost two days. Only a coded message that could have been about the epidemic. \nAndy promises to work hard again, and the general assigns the colonel and his two men to the switchboard in the hall. After brainstorming about potential causes, Janis, another employee, enters the room and puts another stack of reports down. Small college towns, newly engaged girls, poets, all these people have been infected. Janis falls to the floor, and everyone rushes to her. She’s been infected with the disease, and they question her about her activities for the past 12 hours. It’s revealed finally that she wrote a letter to her mother, and Andy finally figures it out. The poison was in the stamps. He lets his higher-ups know, and Janis is carted off to safety. Bettijean and Andy are given a 30-day vacation to relax and explore their relationship further. \n",
"Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud has found himself in charge of the Office of Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection somewhat by accident. As he waits for a replacement, his superior officers nervously warn him about an epidemic that they don’t understand yet, that Andy will be in charge of the response for. Corporal Bettijean Baker is Andy’s assistant, in this previously under-the-radar department that is all of a sudden the most important aspect of the nation’s response. Andy and Bettijean work through reports together to look for a trend, hoping to find how the epidemic is spreading. It seems to be affecting only the United States of America, without affecting Canada even though it has reached Alaska. The dumbfounded officers decide to learn more about the people who have fallen sick. When Bettijean returned with more reports, two other officers came into Andy’s office to show him the headlines: the public panic had started, two days after the office had stopped sleeping to find the root of the issue. The colonel doesn’t appreciate the lack of military formality in the way that Andy and Bettijean are taking, and he angrily orders them to be disciplined before the general interrupts. The general gestures to Andy and Bettijean to continue their work, and sat down with them to talk solemnly. There’s some suspicion about the Soviet Union’s involvement. Recognizing Andy’s need for manpower, the general assigns the very unhappy colonel to report to Andy and Bettijean for as long as the epidemic is going on. Lighting a new cigarette, Andy gets back to work. The team found evidence of small business workers being sick, but no government workers (outside of some in a hospital), no doctors, and no postal workers. They take this as evidence that it’s not communicable, but they find some cities are more affected than others. Writers, poets, artists, and musicians in cities that are often vacation spots are hit hard, along with small college towns. They are interrupted by screams outside their door when Janis falls sick. When she’s able to talk, Andy asks Janis questions about the past twelve hours. She had written and mailed a letter to her mother about the epidemic, but nothing else seemed out of place. Andy pondered over another cigarette as the doctor saw to Janis. Andy suddenly had an idea, frantically searched for Janis’ purse, and handed one of her postage stamps to a lab technician. His hunch was right: the stamp was the problem, licking the glue was how people got sick. Andy starts on a plan to notify the public of the issue, and to investigate the source of the poison in the stamps. The lab was able to identify the toxin, and it would be simple to treat. The general took over giving orders, and gave Andy and Bettijean a month of furlough before marching the stamp out of the office as Andy and Bettijean looked at each other longingly. ",
"The story describes members of the U.S. military Germ Warfare Protection Division as they struggle to understand the cause of a mysterious illness. Sergeant Major Andy McCloud and his Corporal Bettijean Baker slowly learns the details of the pandemic. It is entirely confined to the United States and seems to affect people according to no discernable pattern. The illness is not passed person to person and has affected people regardless of age, location, and behavior while other people are spared.\n\nHigh ranking military officials (the brass) express to Andy the urgency of the situation. As the day wears on, Andymust deal with threats to his operation from officers that believe that, as a noncommissioned officer, He is not qualified to perform his task regardless of his obvious expertise.\n\nVague trends begin to emerge. Large offices see no cases while small ones do; doctors and dentists are mostly unaffected while writers and poets are.\n\nEventually a woman working the phones in the Germ Warfare Protection division falls ill and Andy solves the riddle of the illness. Stamp adhesive is determined to be the vector for the illness. With the mystery solved, a plan to halt the spread of the illness is formulated and the brass gives Andy and Bettijean a vacation furlough and promise of a promotion.",
"Sergeant Andrew McCloud is in charge of the office of Germ War Protection when a mysterious plague breaks out in the United States. His coworker Bettlejean tells him that all kinds of people are coming down with the illness, but no one has died yet. The strangest part about the new disease is that it has only affected Americans. Not even Canadians or Mexicans have become sick. \n\nMcCloud decides to send everyone who works in the office out to do some investigating about where the illness is coming from. He tells Bettlejean that the two of them will work in Washington. They begin to put together clues about the nature of the illness when suddenly a woman in the office, Janis, drops to the ground. She is red and feverish and extremely nervous. After some prodding, she admits that she broke an office rule when she mailed her mother a letter that included information about the outbreak. \n\nAfter a few moments of reflection, McCloud runs to Janis’s office and tears through her drawers to find her stamps. He sends the lab technician to test them, but he is already convinced that the stamps contain poison, and they are behind the mysterious illness. \n\nWhen his superior comes in to ask him what he has discovered, McCloud divulges his beliefs about the problematic stamps. McCloud suggests that the President make an announcement to the public about the poisonous stamps. However, he quickly realizes that the stamps could have been tainted accidentally, and this doesn’t necessarily point to an attack on the country. McCloud is interrupted by a phone call from the lab. The technician informs him that the illness the stamps cause has a quick fix, and the people who are ill are going to be just fine. McCloud allows someone else to take over. He’s too tired and elated to make any more decisions. \n\nThe general offers McCloud and Bettlejean many awards and some time off to get to know each other better. He can tell that they are quite fond of each other. \n\n\n"
] |
30062
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THE PLAGUE
By TEDDY KELLER
Suppose a strictly one hundred per cent American plague showed up.... One that attacked only people within the political borders of the United States!
Illustrated by Schoenherr
Sergeant Major Andrew McCloud ignored the jangling telephones and the excited jabber of a room full of brass, and lit a cigarette. Somebody had to keep his head in this mess. Everybody was about to flip.
Like the telephone. Two days ago Corporal Bettijean Baker had been answering the rare call on the single line—in that friendly, husky voice that gave even generals pause—by saying, "Good morning. Office of the Civil Health and Germ Warfare Protection Co-ordinator." Now there was a switchboard out in the hall with a web of lines running to a dozen girls at a half dozen desks wedged into the outer office. And now the harried girls answered with a hasty, "Germ War Protection."
All the brass hats in Washington had suddenly discovered this office deep in the recesses of the Pentagon. And none of them could quite comprehend what had happened. The situation might have been funny, or at least pathetic, if it hadn't been so desperate. Even so, Andy McCloud's nerves and patience had frayed thin.
"I told you, general," he snapped to the flustered brigadier, "Colonel Patterson was retired ten days ago. I don't know what happened. Maybe this replacement sawbones got strangled in red tape. Anyhow, the brand-new lieutenant hasn't showed up here. As far as I know, I'm in charge."
"But this is incredible," a two-star general wailed. "A mysterious epidemic is sweeping the country, possibly an insidious germ attack timed to precede an all-out invasion, and a noncom is sitting on top of the whole powder keg."
Andy's big hands clenched into fists and he had to wait a moment before he could speak safely. Doggone the freckles and the unruly mop of hair that give him such a boyish look. "May I remind you, general," he said, "that I've been entombed here for two years. My staff and I know what to do. If you'll give us some co-operation and a priority, we'll try to figure this thing out."
"But good heavens," a chicken colonel moaned, "this is all so irregular. A noncom!" He said it like a dirty word.
"Irregular, hell," the brigadier snorted, the message getting through.
"There're ways. Gentlemen, I suggest we clear out of here and let the sergeant get to work." He took a step toward the door, and the other officers, protesting and complaining, moved along after him. As they drifted out, he turned and said, "We'll clear your office for top priority." Then dead serious, he added, "Son, a whole nation could panic at any moment. You've got to come through."
Andy didn't waste time standing. He merely nodded to the general, snubbed out his cigarette, and buzzed the intercom. "Bettijean, will you bring me all the latest reports, please?" Then he peeled out of his be-ribboned blouse and rolled up his sleeves. He allowed himself one moment to enjoy the sight of the slim, black-headed corporal who entered his office.
Bettijean crossed briskly to his desk. She gave him a motherly smile as she put down a thick sheaf of papers. "You look beat," she said.
"Brass give you much trouble?"
"Not much. We're top priority now." He ran fingers through the thick, brown hair and massaged his scalp, trying to generate stimulation to his wary and confused brain. "What's new?"
"I've gone though some of these," she said. "Tried to save you a little time."
"Thanks. Sit down."
She pulled up a chair and thumbed through the papers. "So far, no fatalities. That's why there's no panic yet, I guess. But it's spreading like ... well, like a plague." Fear flickered deep in her dark eyes.
"Any water reports?" Andy asked.
"Wichita O.K., Indianapolis O.K., Tulsa O.K., Buffalo O.K.,—and a bunch more. No indication there. Except"—she fished out a one-page report—"some little town in Tennessee. Yesterday there was a campaign for everybody to write their congressman about some deal and today they were to vote on a new water system. Hardly anybody showed up at the polls. They've all got it."
Andy shrugged. "You can drink water, but don't vote for it. Oh, that's a big help." He rummaged through the clutter on his desk and came up with a crude chart. "Any trends yet?"
"It's hitting everybody," Bettijean said helplessly. "Not many kids so far, thank heavens. But housewives, businessmen, office workers, teachers, preachers—rich, poor—from Florida to Alaska. Just when you called me in, one of the girls thought she had a trend. The isolated mountain areas of the West and South. But reports are too fragmentary."
"What is it?" he cried suddenly, banging the desk. "People deathly ill, but nobody dying. And doctors can't identify the poison until they have a fatality for an autopsy. People stricken in every part of the country, but the water systems are pure. How does it spread?"
"In food?"
"How? There must be hundreds of canneries and dairies and packing plants over the country. How could they all goof at the same time—even if it was sabotage?"
"On the wind?"
"But who could accurately predict every wind over the entire country—even Alaska and Hawaii—without hitting Canada or Mexico? And why wouldn't everybody get it in a given area?"
Bettijean's smooth brow furrowed and she reached across the desk to grip his icy, sweating hands. "Andy, do ... do you think it's ... well, an enemy?"
"I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."
For a long moment he sat there, trying to draw strength from her, punishing his brain for the glimmer of an idea. Finally, shaking his head, he pushed back into his chair and reached for the sheaf of papers.
"We've got to find a clue—a trend—an inkling of something." He nodded toward the outer office. "Stop all in-coming calls. Get those girls on lines to hospitals in every city and town in the country. Have them contact individual doctors in rural areas. Then line up another relief crew, and get somebody carting in more coffee and sandwiches. And on those calls, be sure we learn the sex, age, and occupation of the victims. You and I'll start with Washington."
Bettijean snapped to her feet, grinned her encouragement and strode from the room. Andy could hear her crisp instructions to the girls on the phones. Sucking air through his teeth, he reached for his phone and directory.
He dialed until every finger of his right hand was sore. He spoke to worried doctors and frantic hospital administrators and hysterical nurses. His firm, fine penmanship deteriorated to a barely legible scrawl as writer's cramp knotted his hand and arm. His voice burned down to a rasping whisper. But columns climbed up his rough chart and broken lines pointed vaguely to trends.
It was hours later when Bettijean came back into the office with another stack of papers. Andy hung up his phone and reached for a cigarette. At that moment the door banged open. Nerves raw, Bettijean cried out. Andy's cigarette tumbled from his trembling fingers.
"Sergeant," the chicken colonel barked, parading into the office.
Andy swore under his breath and eyed the two young officers who trailed after the colonel. Emotionally exhausted, he had to clamp his jaw against a huge laugh that struggled up in his throat. For just an instant there, the colonel had reminded him of a movie version of General Rommel strutting up and down before his tanks. But it wasn't a swagger stick the colonel had tucked under his arm. It was a folded newspaper. Opening it, the colonel flung it down on Andy's desk.
"RED PLAGUE SWEEPS NATION," the scare headline screamed. Andy's first glance caught such phrases as "alleged Russian plot" and "germ warfare" and "authorities hopelessly baffled."
Snatching the paper, Andy balled it and hurled it from him. "That'll help a lot," he growled hoarsely.
"Well, then, Sergeant." The colonel tried to relax his square face, but tension rode every weathered wrinkle and fear glinted behind the pale gray eyes. "So you finally recognize the gravity of the situation."
Andy's head snapped up, heated words searing towards his lips. Bettijean stepped quickly around the desk and laid a steady hand on his shoulder.
"Colonel," she said levelly, "you should know better than that."
A shocked young captain exploded, "Corporal. Maybe you'd better report to—"
"All right," Andy said sharply.
For a long moment he stared at his clenched fists. Then he exhaled slowly and, to the colonel, flatly and without apology, he said,
"You'll have to excuse the people in this office if they overlook some of the G.I. niceties. We've been without sleep for two days, we're surviving on sandwiches and coffee, and we're fighting a war here that makes every other one look like a Sunday School picnic." He felt Bettijean's hand tighten reassuringly on his shoulder and he gave her a tired smile. Then he hunched forward and picked up a report. "So say what you came here to say and let us get back to work."
"Sergeant," the captain said, as if reading from a manual,
"insubordination cannot be tolerated, even under emergency conditions. Your conduct here will be noted and—"
"Oh, good heavens!" Bettijean cried, her fingers biting into Andy's shoulder. "Do you have to come in here trying to throw your weight around when this man—"
"That's enough," the colonel snapped. "I had hoped that you two would co-operate, but...." He let the sentence trail off as he swelled up a bit with his own importance. "I have turned Washington upside down to get these two officers from the surgeon general's office. Sergeant. Corporal. You are relieved of your duties as of this moment. You will report to my office at once for suitable disciplinary action."
Bettijean sucked in a strained breath and her hand flew to her mouth.
"But you can't—"
"Let's go," Andy said, pushing up from his chair. Ignoring the brass, he turned to her and brushed his lips across hers. "Let them sweat a while. Let 'em have the whole stinking business. Whatever they do to us, at least we can get some sleep."
"But you can't quit now," Bettijean protested. "These brass hats don't know from—"
"Corporal!" the colonel roared.
And from the door, an icy voice said, "Yes, colonel?"
The colonel and his captains wheeled, stared and saluted. "Oh, general," the colonel said. "I was just—"
"I know," the brigadier said, stepping into the room. "I've been listening to you. And I thought I suggested that everybody leave the sergeant and his staff alone."
"But, general, I—"
The general showed the colonel his back and motioned Andy into his chair. He glanced to Bettijean and a smile warmed his wedge face.
"Corporal, were you speaking just then as a woman or as a soldier?"
Crimson erupted into Bettijean's face and her tight laugh said many things. She shrugged. "Both I guess."
The general waved her to a chair and, oblivious of the colonel, pulled up a chair for himself. The last trace of humor drained from his face as he leaned elbows on the desk. "Andy, this is even worse than we had feared."
Andy fumbled for a cigarette and Bettijean passed him a match. A captain opened his mouth to speak, but the colonel shushed him.
"I've just come from Intelligence," the general said. "We haven't had a report—nothing from our agents, from the Diplomatic Corps, from the civilian newspapermen—not a word from any Iron Curtain country for a day and half. Everybody's frantic. The last item we had—it was a coded message the Reds'd tried to censor—was an indication of something big in the works."
"A day and half ago," Andy mused. "Just about the time we knew we had an epidemic. And about the time they knew it."
"It could be just propaganda," Bettijean said hopefully, "proving that they could cripple us from within."
The general nodded. "Or it could be the softening up for an all-out effort. Every American base in the world is alerted and every serviceman is being issued live ammunition. If we're wrong, we've still got an epidemic and panic that could touch it off. If we're right ... well, we've got to know. What can you do?"
Andy dropped his haggard face into his hands. His voice came through muffled. "I can sit here and cry." For an eternity he sat there, futility piling on helplessness, aware of Bettijean's hand on his arm. He heard the colonel try to speak and sensed the general's movement that silenced him.
Suddenly he sat upright and slapped a palm down on the desk. "We'll find your answers, sir. All we ask is co-operation."
The general gave both Andy and Bettijean a long, sober look, then launched himself from the chair. Pivoting, he said, "Colonel, you and your captains will be stationed by that switchboard out there. For the duration of this emergency, you will take orders only from the sergeant and the corporal here."
"But, general," the colonel wailed, "a noncom? I'm assigned—"
The general snorted. "Insubordination cannot be tolerated—unless you find a two-star general to outrank me. Now, as I said before, let's get out of here and let these people work."
The brass exited wordlessly. Bettijean sighed noisily. Andy found his cigarette dead and lit another. He fancied a tiny lever in his brain and he shifted gears to direct his thinking back into the proper channel. Abruptly his fatigue began to lift. He picked up the new pile of reports Bettijean had brought in.
She move around the desk and sat, noting the phone book he had used, studying the names he had crossed off. "Did you learn anything?" she asked.
Andy coughed, trying to clear his raw throat. "It's crazy," he said.
"From the Senate and House on down, I haven't found a single government worker sick."
"I found a few," she said. "Over in a Virginia hospital."
"But I did find," Andy said, flipping through pages of his own scrawl, "a society matron and her social secretary, a whole flock of office workers—business, not government—and new parents and newly engaged girls and...." He shrugged.
"Did you notice anything significant about those office workers?"
Andy nodded. "I was going to ask you the same, since I was just guessing. I hadn't had time to check it out."
"Well, I checked some. Practically none of my victims came from big offices, either business or industry. They were all out of one and two-girl offices or small businesses."
"That was my guess. And do you know that I didn't find a doctor, dentist or attorney?"
"Nor a single postal worker."
Andy tried to smile. "One thing we do know. It's not a communicable thing. Thank heaven for—"
He broke off as a cute blonde entered and put stacks of reports before both Andy and Bettijean. The girl hesitated, fidgeting, fingers to her teeth. Then, without speaking, she hurried out.
Andy stared at the top sheet and groaned. "This may be something. Half the adult population of Aspen, Colorado, is down."
"What?" Bettijean frowned over the report in her hands. "It's the same thing—only not quite as severe—in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico."
"Writers?"
"Mostly. Some artists, too, and musicians. And poets are among the hard hit."
"This is insane," Andy muttered. "Doctors and dentists are fine—writers and poets are sick. Make sense out of that."
Bettijean held up a paper and managed a confused smile. "Here's a country doctor in Tennessee. He doesn't even know what it's all about. Nobody's sick in his valley."
"Somebody in our outer office is organized," Andy said, pulling at his cigarette. "Here're reports from a dozen military installations all lumped together."
"What does it show?"
"Black-out. By order of somebody higher up—no medical releases. Must mean they've got it." He scratched the growing stubble on his chin.
"If this were a fifth column setup, wouldn't the armed forces be the first hit?"
"Sure," Bettijean brightened, then sobered. "Maybe not. The brass could keep it secret if an epidemic hit an army camp. And they could slap a control condition on any military area. But the panic will come from the general public."
"Here's another batch," Andy said. "Small college towns under twenty-five thousand population. All hard hit."
"Well, it's not split intellectually. Small colleges and small offices and writers get it. Doctors don't and dentists don't. But we can't tell who's got it on the military bases."
"And it's not geographical. Look, remember those two reports from Tennessee? That place where they voted on water bonds or something, everybody had it. But the country doctor in another section hadn't even heard of it." Andy could only shake his head.
Bettijean heaved herself up from the chair and trudged back to the outer office. She returned momentarily with a tray of food. Putting a paper cup of coffee and a sandwich in front of Andy, she sat down and nibbled at her snack like an exhausted chipmunk.
Andy banged a fist at his desk again. Coffee splashed over the rim of his cup onto the clutter of papers. "It's here," he said angrily.
"It's here somewhere, but we can't find it."
"The answer?"
"Of course. What is it that girls in small offices do or eat or drink or wear that girls in large offices don't do or eat or drink or wear? What do writers and doctors do differently? Or poets and dentists? What are we missing? What—"
In the outer office a girl cried out. A body thumped against a desk, then a chair, then to the floor. Two girls screamed.
Andy bolted up from his chair. Racing to the door, he shouted back to Bettijean, "Get a staff doctor and a chemist from the lab."
It was the girl who had been so nervous in his office earlier. Now she lay in a pathetic little heap between her desk and chair, whimpering, shivering, eyes wide with horror. The other girls clustered at the hall door, plainly ready to stampede.
"It's not contagious," Andy growled. "Find some blankets or coats to cover her. And get a glass of water."
The other girls, glad for the excuse, dashed away. Andy scooped up the fallen girl and put her down gently on the close-jammed desks. He used a chair cushion for a pillow. By then the other girls were back with a blanket and the glass of water. He covered the girl, gave her a sip of water and heard somebody murmur, "Poor Janis."
"Now," Andy said brightly, "how's that, Janis?"
She mustered a smile, and breathed, "Better. I ... I was so scared. Fever and dizzy ... symptoms like the epidemic."
"Now you know there's nothing to be afraid of," Andy said, feeling suddenly and ridiculously like a pill roller with a practiced bedside manner. "You know you may feel pretty miserable, but nobody's conked out with this stuff yet."
Janis breathed out and her taut body relaxed.
"Don't hurry," Andy said, "but I want you to tell me everything that you did—everything you ate or drank—in the last ... oh, twelve hours." He felt a pressure behind him and swiveled his head to see Bettijean standing there. He tried to smile.
"What time is it?" Janis asked weakly.
Andy glanced to a wall clock, then gave it a double take.
One of the girls said, "It's three o'clock in the morning." She edged nearer Andy, obviously eager to replace Janis as the center of attention. Andy ignored her.
"I ... I've been here since ... golly, yesterday morning at nine," Janis said. "I came to work as usual and...."
Slowly, haltingly, she recited the routine of a routine work day, then told about the quick snack that sufficed for supper and about staying on her phone and typewriter for another five hours. "It was about eleven when the relief crew came in."
"What did you do then?" Andy asked.
"I ... I took a break and...." Her ivory skin reddened, the color spreading into the roots of her fluffy curls, and she turned her face away from Andy. "And I had a sandwich and some coffee and got a little nap in the ladies' lounge and ... and that's all."
"And that's not all," Andy prompted. "What else?"
"Nothing," Janis said too quickly.
Andy shook his head. "Tell it all and maybe it'll help."
"But ... but...."
"Was it something against regulations?"
"I ... I don't know. I think...."
"I'll vouch for your job in this office."
"Well...." She seemed on the verge of tears and her pleading glance sought out Andy, then Bettijean, then her co-workers. Finally, resigned, she said, "I ... I wrote a letter to my mother."
Andy swallowed against his groan of disappointment. "And you told her about what we were doing here."
Janis nodded, and tears welled into her wide eyes.
"Did you mail it?"
"Y ... yes."
"You didn't use a government envelope to save a stamp?"
"Oh, no. I always carry a few stamps with me." She choked down a sob.
"Did I do wrong?"
"No, I don't think so," Andy said, patting her shoulder. "There's certainly nothing secret about this epidemic. Now you just take it easy and—. Oh, here's a doctor now."
The doctor, a white-headed Air Force major, bustled into the room. A lab technician in a white smock was close behind. Andy could only shrug and indicate the girl.
Turning away, lighting a cigarette, he tried to focus on the tangle of thoughts that spun through his head. Doctors, writers, society matrons, office workers—Aspen, Taos and college towns—thousands of people sick—but none in that valley in Tennessee—and few government workers—just one girl in his office—and she was sicker and more frightened about a letter—and....
"Hey, wait!" Andy yelled.
Everyone in the room froze as Andy spun around, dashed to Bettijean's desk and yanked out the wide, top drawer. He pawed through it, straightened, then leaped across to the desk Janis had used. He snatched open drawer after drawer. In a bottom one he found her purse. Ripping it open, he dumped the contents on the desk and clawed through the pile until he found what he wanted. Handing it to the lab technician, he said, "Get me a report. Fast."
The technician darted out.
Andy wheeled to Bettijean. "Get the brass in here. And call the general first." To the doctor, he said, "Give that girl the best of everything."
Then he ducked back to his own office and to the pile of reports. He was still poring over them when the general arrived. Half a dozen other brass hats, none of whom had been to bed, were close behind. The lab technician arrived a minute later. He shook his head as he handed his hastily scribbled report to Andy.
It was Bettijean who squeezed into the office and broke the brittle silence. "Andy, for heaven's sake, what is it?" Then she moved around the desk to stand behind him as he faced the officers.
"Have you got something?" the brigadier asked. "Some girl outside was babbling about writers and doctors, and dentists and college students, and little secretaries and big secretaries. Have you established a trend?"
Andy glanced at the lab report and his smile was as relieved as it was weary. "Our problem," he said, "was in figuring out what a writer does that a doctor doesn't—why girls from small offices were sick—and why senators and postal workers weren't—why college students caught the bug and people in a Tennessee community didn't.
"The lab report isn't complete. They haven't had time to isolate the poison and prescribe medication. But"—he held up a four-cent stamp—"here's the villain, gentlemen."
The big brass stood stunned and shocked. Mouths flapped open and eyes bugged at Andy, at the stamp.
Bettijean said, "Sure. College kids and engaged girls and new parents and especially writers and artists and poets—they'd all lick lots of stamps. Professional men have secretaries. Big offices have postage-meter machines. And government offices have free franking. And"—she threw her arms around the sergeant's neck—"Andy, you're wonderful."
"The old American ingenuity," the colonel said, reaching for Andy's phone. "I knew we could lick it. Now all we have to do—"
"At ease, colonel," the brigadier said sharply. He waited until the colonel had retreated, then addressed Andy. "It's your show. What do you suggest?"
"Get somebody—maybe even the President—on all radio and TV networks. Explain frankly about the four-centers and warn against licking any stamps. Then—"
He broke off as his phone rang. Answering, he listened for a moment, then hung up and said, "But before the big announcement, get somebody checking on the security clearances at whatever plant it is where they print stamps. This's a big deal. Somebody may've been planted years ago for this operation. It shouldn't be too hard.
"But there's no evidence it was a plot yet. Could be pure accident—some chemical in the stickum spoiled. Do they keep the stickum in barrels? Find out who had access. And ... oh, the phone call. That was the lab. The antidote's simple and the cure should be quick. They can phone or broadcast the medical information to doctors. The man on the phone said they could start emptying hospitals in six hours. And maybe we should release some propaganda. "United States whips mystery virus," or something like that. And we could send the Kremlin a stamp collection and.... Aw, you take it, sir. I'm pooped."
The general wheeled to fire a salvo of commands. Officers poured into the corridor. Only the brigadier remained, a puzzled frown crinkling his granite brow.
"But you said that postal workers weren't getting sick."
Andy chucked. "That's right. Did you ever see a post office clerk lick a stamp? They always use a sponge."
The general looked to Bettijean, to Andy, to the stamp. He grinned and the grin became a rumbling laugh. "How would you two like a thirty-day furlough to rest up—or to get better acquainted?"
Bettijean squealed. Andy reached for her hand.
"And while you're gone," the general continued, "I'll see what strings I can pull. If I can't wangle you a couple of battlefield commissions, I'll zip you both through O.C.S. so fast you won't even have time to pin on the bars."
But neither Andy nor Bettijean had heard a word after the mention of furlough. Like a pair of puppy-lovers, they were sinking into the depths of each other's eyes.
And the general was still chuckling as he picked up the lone four-cent stamp in his left hand, made a gun of his right hand, and marched the stamp out of the office under guard.
THE END
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A BOTTLE OF Old Wine by Richard O. Lewis.
Relevant chunks:
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins in a living room where a husband and wife sit in their respective chairs, the wife wearing a headset called a telovis. The husband, Herbert Hyrel, figures she is watching a sex-opera as her escapist entertainment of choice, and waits a few minutes to start his own entertainment. As we waits, he considers his anger towards his wife: he no longer resented the time she spent not talking to him, while utilizing her telovis, but he did hate that she controlled the purse-strings in the household and gave him a small allowance. His anger had been pent up for some time, enough that he wanted to kill his wife, but for now he was satisfied with the idea of killing her. Once enough time had passed, he flicked a switch on the teleporter suit he was wearing and a version of his body appeared in a cabin in the woods that he was renting, where he had left himself a fresh outfit. He headed to the Riverside Club where he hoped to encounter a woman he had met recently, and when he got there he sat down and drank some cheap whiskey. He encountered a costumed woman who teased him, pulled away to dance with someone else, but came back to dance with him once the man she was with disappeared. This man had flipped the switch on his suit, disappearing and leaving behind a pile of clothes, presumably because he would have been discovered wherever his original body was. As Herbert danced and moved outside, he spotted the woman he had been looking for, wearing a suggestive costume and a platinum wig, her body and her purse all covered in jewels. She asked him for champagne, which he was upset about because he did not have much money, but he obliged and tried to move the night forward after he had had something to drink. Again, though, she requested he spend more money on her--this time, for a private room at the club so they did not have to be outside. She said she was asking him to prove to her that she could be spoiled, but this pressure reminded him how angry he was that he had to spend the little money he had trying to escape from his wife, budgeting in a way that limited his nights out just to have some privacy. He started yelling about how he would have more money soon, and eventually admitted that he would kill his wife to get it. Hearing this, the woman he was with pulled a gun out of her purse and shot him--it was his wife all along. The scene jumps back to the house, where the wife pulls off her telovis set, smugly turns off her husband's teleporter suit, and watches him gasp for air and die. She called the police to call for a doctor, hid her own teleporter suit, and waited for the police to show.",
"Herbert Hyrel finds himself in a loveless and difficult marriage. His wife has withdrawn herself, sticking to her televois or 3-D TV, and only gives him a monthly allowance. Her generational wealth makes him feel emasculated and weak, which only strengthens his hatred for her. Hyrel has recently invested in a teleporter suit, one that took him six months of saving to put the down payment on. This suit allows him to leave his corporeal body and travel to a shadow realm, where his conscious spirit can roam free. He uses this to drink, party, meet women, and escape from his wife and true reality. \nHe’s looking forward to traveling again, because of the woman he met last time in the flapper outfit. He hopes that this night will be the night she gives herself to him. After soaking in the wonderful thoughts of murdering his wife--which he plans to do as soon as the thought no longer brings him joy--Hyrel flicks the switch on his teleporter suit and arrives naked in a small cabin. Quickly, he changes into his cheap satin suit and makes his way to Riverside Club by taking the bus and walking. Once there, he orders a bottle of cheap whiskey, thanks to his depleting funds, and watches the masked dancers around him. A woman in a Persian-themed costume kisses him on the cheek but leaves him for another man. That man suddenly disappears, leaving only his costume behind. Hyrel reveals that those who get hurt in the shadow realm carry the hurt back with them in the real world. For example, he cut his hand in Riverside Club, and the pain traveled with him, but not the scar. \nThe Persian dancer joins him again, and they start to leave the club. He’s drawn to another woman the same from the night before. He swaps ladies and dances with her instead. She asks for champagne, which he reluctantly purchases. \nThey drink, and then he forces her out of the club. Feeling less-than, he forces himself on her, trying to kiss and grope her. She keeps asking him if he has enough money for her, where his private room is, and if he’ll be coming back soon. This only emasculates him more and he soon explodes, telling her that he’s going to kill his wife so he can finally have her money and do what he wants. \nThe flapper pulls out a gun and shoots him in the head and brain. She flicks the switch, and Mrs. Hyrel wakes up in her chair. She flicks the switch on Herbert, and he comes back in a vegetative state since his body brought back the pain, but not the scar. She calls the police, alibi in check, then removes and hides her teleporter suit. She puts on a pair of blue pajamas then meets the police at the door. \n",
"Herbert Hyrel is a man in an unhappy marriage who plots to murder his wife in order to be rid of her and inherit her money. Herbert despises the way his wife looks at him, and he imagines her denigrating him as a gold-digger with nothing to offer a woman, so he privately purchases a telporter suit--a thin, mesh body cover that can be worn under one's clothes and is used to transport the wearer's \"shadowy self\" to a receiver previously set in secret. While he believes his wife is watching a sex-opera using her telovis (a 3-D imaging device), Herbert engages the telporter and transports himself to a cabin situated between a highway and a river. There, he changes clothes and walks to the Riverside Club (a place where owners of telporter suits can gather to escape their dreary outer lives) where he plans to meet a girl he had met the previous night. Because telporting oneself is illegal, rooms at the club are very expensive in order to cover the costs of police protection and Herbert cannot afford a private room there with the allowance his wife gives him. The club is colorful and full of costumed, masked partyers, dancing together and drinking champagne. Herbert purchases a bottle of whiskey because he cannot afford the expensive champagne. As Herbert drinks, he becomes more relaxed and confident, and he watches a woman dressed in a Persian costume dancing with a man dressed as a bullfighter. Soon after, the bullfighter disappears, and Herbert is reminded that sometimes people at the club vanish suddenly when there is a threat they will be discovered in their outer lives. He also notices a scar on his hand and is reminded that when someone's shadow self is injured, their outer husk retains the feeling of pain but not the scar. Herbert dances with the Persian-costumed woman and becomes steadily more intoxicated by drink and by the atmosphere of revelry. Eventually, he finds the girl he had met the night before, recognizing her by her long, stockinged legs. She wears a platinum wig, a white mask, and green contact lenses, and they dance together and kiss. The drunker Herbert becomes, the more insecure he feels about his ability to satisfy the woman, and he begins lashing out at her, accidentally revealing his plans to kill his wife in order to take her money so he can start a new life with the mysterious woman. The woman laughs at him, and she withdraws a gun from her purse and shoots Herbert twice--once in the heart and then in the head. The woman is actually Mrs. Herbert Hyrel, and she has been using her own telporter suit to expose Herbert and dispose of him herself. Because Herbert’s gunshot wounds do not transfer with his shadowy self back to his outer body, it appears as if Herbert simply died. Mrs. Herbert Hyrel calls the police, hides the telporter suits, and awaits their arrival.",
"Herbert Hyrel and his wife have an unhappy marriage. Herbert hates his wife and feels as if she thinks she is better than he is. She has money but only gives him a small allowance, and he resents her for this. She isn’t fond of him either. Every night, she puts on her telovis for about three hours. Herbert thinks she is watching black-market sex-operas. Once she is caught up in the program, he uses his teleporter suit to escape to the Riverside Club. This is an exclusive club for people with teleporter suits, money, and a desire for self-abandonment. People go there to escape their boring, unpleasant lives and wear costumes to hide their identities while they engage in drunken, sexually-abandoned activities. Herbert has met a girl there and wants to see her again. He looks for her when he first arrives but doesn’t see her, so he is interested in a Persian dancing girl who flirts with him. She is with a man dressed as a toreador. Herbert catches a glimpse of the scar on his hand where he had cut it at the club three weeks ago. In his unteleported body, he feels the pain of the cut but has no cut. \n\tLater in the evening, the toreador disappears from the dance floor, leaving behind a pool of his clothes. This means that he had to teleport back to his real life immediately; it is something that has happened many times at the club. Emboldened by his whiskey, Herbert moves in and embraces the Persian dancing girl. He draws her toward the exit to the gardens when he sees a long leg wearing a black mesh stocking protruding from a private booth. That is what the girl from the previous evening was wearing. He pulls the stockinged girl from the booth and dances with her. The stockinged girl is wearing a can-can dancer costume. She insists on having a glass of champagne before Herbert takes her outside. While she drinks, he worries that he won’t be able to see her again until he gets his next allowance in two weeks and that she will find someone else in the meantime. He decides that he is going to kill his wife so he can have her money. When he tries to take the girl outside, she resists. She lets him know she wants him to have the money for a private room, show her a good time, and come see her often. He tells her he’ll have plenty of money after tonight and that he will kill his wife to get it. The dancer pulls a gun from her purse and shoots him. \n\tMrs. Hyrel removes her telovis and pushes Herbert’s teleport button to bring him back. His eyes open, and then he dies. She calls the police, saying something horrible has happened to her husband. Then she changes clothes, removing her teleporter suit, and hiding it behind a hidden door at the back of the medicine cabinet.\n"
] |
30004
|
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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What is the significance of teleporter suits in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A BOTTLE OF Old Wine by Richard O. Lewis.
Relevant chunks:
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Question:
What is the significance of teleporter suits in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Teleporter suits play an important role in the relationship of Herbert and his wife, but also in the society that they live in more broadly. In terms of broad significance, the teleporter suits are important to the Riverside Club, as only people who own one are allowed to enter. They are illegal to own, so the club had to be careful about who they let in. Even though they are frowned upon, it seems they are a popular purchase for those who can afford them. Both Herbert and his wife own one, though we don't learn that his wife has one until the end of the story. For Herbert, the teleporter suit is his ticket to spend time outside of the house that he feels trapped in, in a relationship that he is not happy in. It allows him to visit this club and meet other people. At the same time, it is these suits that allowed his wife to follow him to the club and convince him to admit his plans, eventually ending in his death. After she shoots him, she hides her own suit but leaves his on his person. Because the body in the suit and the other copy of the body experience things differently, it was a sneaky way to kill her husband. ",
"Teleporter suits are an illegal yet highly sought-after and expensive tech gadget in this society. With this suit, the wearer can be transported to another realm, while their body remains in place. Their souls can have fun, dance the night away, drink as much as they want, and their partners or families will never know. The next morning, however, when they return to their corporeal body, they will carry last night’s hangover with them to the physical realm. \nThe teleporter suit allows Herbert Hyrel to escape his suffocating household and relish in his manly and sexual fantasies. He wants to prove himself to society and to brand himself as something he is not. In this other world, he can pretend to be a much richer, more powerful man. His rich wife makes him feel insignificant, so he takes his troubles to the shadow realm. \nThe teleporter suits allow the wearer to travel between realms, but a connection between the shadow self and body remains. Whatever happens to the shadow self, will also happen to the corporeal self, only the physical or visual element will not be there. So, if someone were to get hurt in the shadow realm, their physical body would feel the pain but would not bear the scars. \nThis allows Mrs. Herbert Hyrel to murder her husband in the shadow realm, and return to the physical world without blood or any incriminating evidence. \n",
"The telporter suits catalyze the major conflict in the story. In one sense, Herbert's telporter suit represents his ability to escape what he considers to be an emasculating, oppressive marriage. On the other hand, Mrs. Hyrel's secret telporter suit leads to Herbert's eventual demise. The suits are made of a thin mesh that fits the body like a stocking and can be worn underneath one's clothes. The telporter can be engaged by flicking a small switch, and it sends its wearer to a receiver at a previously-set location. Herbert installs his receiver at a small cabin in the woods a short distance away from the Riverside Club since he cannot afford the private rooms there. Herbert does not understand the mechanics behind the suit, but he grasps its basic function--the suits transport a person's \"shadowy self\" from one's body and the body is left in \"a conscious but dream-like state.\" When the shadowy self returns, the body does not retain any scars the shadowy self may have sustained but it does feel the pain of those injuries. Self-telportation is also illegal, although the Riverside Club maintains police protection by charging high prices and paying them off. Mrs. Hyrel uses to her advantage when she foils Herbert's plans to kill her and instead kills him and makes it appear as if he simply died while engaging in illegal activity.",
"\n\tThe teleporter suits provide people with a means of escape from their boring or unpleasant lives. Many people have them and use them to go to the Riverside Club where they can abandon their lives and live for the pleasure of the moment without anyone knowing who they are since everyone there wears costumes and masks. In addition, self-teleportation is illegal, so no one wants anyone else to know they have teleportation suits. When people use their teleporter suits, their real bodies stay where they are in reality while their “shadow” bodies travel to another place. People who teleport to the Riverside Club can do anything they want without their spouses or anyone else knowing what they are doing. Meanwhile, since their real bodies remain in “real life,” it looks as if the person is still there, doing nothing out of the ordinary that can draw suspicion or blame from anyone who knows them. \n"
] |
30004
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A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
|
Describe the significance of the Riverside Club in the society in general and the story in particular.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A BOTTLE OF Old Wine by Richard O. Lewis.
Relevant chunks:
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Question:
Describe the significance of the Riverside Club in the society in general and the story in particular.
Answer:
|
[
"The Riverside Club is a place that only the wealthy can escape to: all of the clientele have a lot of money, but they also needed a lot of money to gain access, as they have to prove that they own a teleporter suit to get in. Everyone who goes there is looking to escape themselves, but ironically Herbert escapes his wife to end up right back in front of her. Besides being a point of interest because it offered the clearest path of escape for Herbert, the club is also important because it shows glimpses into how the suits work: when someone has to leave suddenly, their clothes are left behind because it is just the copy of the body that moves. The club also was significant to the story because it provided a place for Herbert's wife to play out her plan to catch Herbert in his own plot.",
"The Riverside Club represents the most hedonistic, wealthy, and illusion-filled group of people. It caters to the wealthy, giving them a place to escape the troubles and rules of the corporeal world and loosen up with ample drinks and scantily-clad people. The Riverside Club creates a fantasy for people to run away to, a dreamworld where cheating isn’t bad, where over-drinking is normal, and where people can be whoever they want to be. \nIn the case of Mr. Herbert Hyrel, he travels to the Riverside Club to make himself feel like more of the man he wants to be. He goes there to pick up women, prove to them that he’s worth something, as well as prove that same sentiment to himself. His rich wife no longer shares her money nor her time with him, which only further emasculates him. He travels to the Riverside Club in search of fantasy and other women. However, he had to use her money in order to buy the teleporter suit that could take him there. The Riverside Club eventually becomes the scene of Hyrel’s reunion with his wife and subsequent murder. \n",
"The Riverside Club is a social club where revelers can self-telport in order to escape their outer lives and dress in lavish costumes, drink champagne, and dance and sleep together in private rooms. The club has a large main room softly lit by intermingling, colored lights. People dance on the dance floor in this room and dine and drink together at tables surrounding it. There are also private rooms and booths hidden within the walls surrounding the main room. Near the exit stands a clump of artificial palm trees which leads outside to a garden where Herbert attempts to drag the mysterious woman when they are dancing together, presumably for a sexual encounter. Herbert wants to go outside because he cannot afford a private room, and when the mysterious woman insists they wait until he can afford one, Herbert explodes in a rage and reveals his plot to kill his wife. The club is quite expensive for practical purposes--since self-telportation is illegal, they need to charge enough to cover the cost of paying off the police. The Riverside Club represents Herbert's physical and mental retreat from his miserable life and is also the environment that ultimately leads to his death.",
"The Riverside Club is an exclusive club for people with money who want to live out their fantasies without other people knowing who they are or what they are doing. The club requires its members to have money, a desire for self-abandonment, and a teleporter suit; it encourages people to act without society’s limitations on its citizens. It offers alcoholic beverages, private booths and rooms, and places outdoors where couples can engage in any activity they want. The club’s atmosphere is happy, fun, and exotic with altering lights, music, drinks, and dancing. It offers people the opportunity to remain physically present in their acceptable roles while escaping those roles in private. Because their real identities are hidden, people can act in ways that are uncharacteristic to them, with unpopular people becoming popular, depressed people becoming cheerful, and inferior-feeling men becoming “all-conquering males.” \n\tIn the story, the Riverside Club is significant because it is the escape that Herbert and his wife both turn to, enabling them to act out their fantasies away from each other. However, it is ironic that the girl Herbert meets and can’t wait to see again is his wife. She, however, knows who Herbert is since she is prepared and has a gun and kills him when he says he is going to murder his wife. Mrs. Hryel seems to have been going to the club to ultimately get rid of Herbert and enjoy herself since she is in a private booth with someone else when he finds her. It also seems that she has had “entertainment” with other men because she tells him, “A girl doesn’t like to be taken outside,” and Herbert interprets this as meaning she has had assignations with other men, but those men all had private rooms. \n"
] |
30004
|
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
|
Who is Herbert's wife and what is her role in the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about A BOTTLE OF Old Wine by Richard O. Lewis.
Relevant chunks:
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
Question:
Who is Herbert's wife and what is her role in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Herbert's wife controls the financial affairs in their household. She is a fan of her telovis set, her preferred medium for escapist entertainment, and Herbert is under the impression that she likes to watch sex-operas, which are a longer experience that rely on emotional build-up. She makes most of the money but also controls it all, which Herbert resents her for--he thinks she is keeping it from him, and feels looked down upon when she gives him his allowance. This infantilizing attitude makes him extremely angry. She is devious and cunning, and hatches a plan to catch him in his act. It is her, after all, that drove him to want to escape. Either to confirm suspicions of a murder plot or to disrupt his own escapist time, she has her own teleporter suit that she uses to position herself to seduce her husband in the one place he figured he would be free from her. She dresses up covered in jewels and insists that he spend money on her to pressure him to admitting that he has none, which eventually pushes him to admit his plan. She kills him once she hears this, and calmly puts everything back in order as she reports something being wrong with her husband to the police, clearly not upset that her husband is dead. ",
"Mrs. Herbert Hyrel is the daughter of a wealthy family. Although she and Herbert most likely originally married for love, their relationship quickly spiraled out of control and soon their disparity in wealth became a pressing issue. \nMrs. Hyrel withdrew herself from her husband once she felt that he was only with her for her money. She allotted him a monthly allowance, but that was all. Since Herbert was not the breadwinner, he felt emasculated and out of control in his own home. She is the instigator for his violent fantasies of killing her, and the woman that draws him back to Riverside Club. \nHer jewel-studded flapper dress that reveals her legs reveals her wealth and status at the Riverside Club. She wears green contacts and a platinum wig to further disguise herself from Herbert. Despite being married, he fails to recognize her, and, after tempting him and berating him, he reveals to her his plans to murder his wife. She then murders him in the shadow realm, killing his soul there but leaving his corporeal body intact in the real world. After traveling back to their home, Mrs. Herbert Hyrel supposedly gets away with the murder by pretending to be the doting wife concerned for her husband’s health. She also has a rock-solid alibi with the televois and the fact that Hyrel was in an illegal teleporter suit. \n",
"Mrs. Herbert Hyrel is a strong, financially independent woman loathed by her husband because he feels she considers him less of a man because of his reliance upon her. At the beginning of the story, she wears a telovis--a device used to render 3-D images of remote performances in one's own living room. Herbert suspects she is using the device to watch a sex-opera, and that explains the slight smile on her face as he watches her. In reality, she is likely smiling because she is confident in her plan to catch Herbert at the Riverside Club and kill him there. Mrs. Hyrel provides Herbert a small allowance, which he saves up to purchase his own telporter suit, not knowing that she also has one. Mrs. Hyrel uses Herbert's tendency toward fantasy as an advantage in her plot against him. She takes on the persona of the mysterious woman, wearing a white mask, green contact lenses, and a platinum blonde wig. She seduces Herbert, and eventually kills him when he admits his plot to her. She knows she will get away with his murder because once his shadowy self transfers back into his body, there will be no visible wounds.",
"Herbert’s wife is the can-can girl that he met at the Riverside Club the night before, but he doesn’t recognize her. She detests Herbert and resents having to give him some of her money. She acts as if he tricked her into marrying him and now treats him like an irresponsible child. Every night, she escapes from him when she puts on her telovis and watches shows for three hours. The night in the story, we learn that she actually teleports to the Riverside Club, too. At the club the night before, she met Herbert and flirted with him so much that he couldn’t wait to see her again. When he goes to the club the night that the story takes place, he looks for her, finally finds her, and pulls her out of a booth to him. She wears a can-can dancer outfit that highlights her long legs. Herbert tries to take her outside immediately, but she insists on having champagne first. She drinks her champagne slowly while Herbert is anxious that he might have to teleport back. Herbert decides that he will go ahead and kill his wife, as he has been thinking about doing for quite some time. They dance, and then Herbert tries to pull her outside. Mrs. Hyrel asks if he doesn’t have a private room he can take her to. Frustrated, he drags her outside, but she pushes away from him and says she needs to know he can afford a private room, show her a good time, and come there often to see her. When he says he’ll have money after tomorrow night, she insists they will wait until then. Angry and desperate, Herbert vows he will kill his wife, and then he will have money. Mrs. Hyrel laughs and asks who he will kill, and he repeats it even though he realizes he shouldn’t. She removes a gun from her purse and shoots him in the heart and the head. She teleports back home, presses his teleporter button, and after he dies, she calls the police saying that something horrible has happened to her husband. Before the police arrive, she changes out of her teleporter suit and hides it behind a hidden back in the medicine cabinet.\n"
] |
30004
|
A grim tale of a future in which everyone is desperate to escape reality, and a hero who wants to have his wine and drink it, too.
A BOTTLE OF
Old Wine
By Richard O. Lewis
Illustrated by KELLY FREAS
Herbert Hyrel
settled himself more comfortably in his easy chair, extended his short legs further toward the fireplace, and let his eyes travel cautiously in the general direction of his wife.
She was in her chair as usual, her long legs curled up beneath her, the upper half of her face hidden in the bulk of her personalized, three-dimensional telovis. The telovis, of a stereoscopic nature, seemingly brought the performers with all their tinsel and color directly into the room of the watcher.
Hyrel had no way of seeing into the plastic affair she wore, but he guessed from the expression on the lower half of her face that she was watching one of the newer black-market sex-operas. In any event, there would be no sound, movement, or sign of life from her for the next three hours. To break the thread of the play for even a moment would ruin all the previous emotional build-up.
There had been a time when he hated her for those long and silent evenings, lonely hours during which he was completely ignored. It was different now, however, for those hours furnished him with time for an escape of his own.
His lips curled into a tight smile and his right hand fondled the unobtrusive switch beneath his trouser leg. He did not press the switch. He would wait a few minutes longer. But it was comforting to know that it was there, exhilarating to know that he could escape for a few hours by a mere flick of his finger.
He let his eyes stray to the dim light of the artificial flames in the fireplace. His hate for her was not bounded merely by those lonely hours she had forced upon him. No, it was far more encompassing.
He hated her with a deep, burning savagery that was deadly in its passion. He hated her for her money, the money she kept securely from him. He hated her for the paltry allowance she doled out to him, as if he were an irresponsible child. It was as if she were constantly reminding him in every glance and gesture, "I made a bad bargain when I married you. You wanted me, my money, everything, and had nothing to give in return except your own doltish self. You set a trap for me, baited with lies and a false front. Now you are caught in your own trap and will remain there like a mouse to eat from my hand whatever crumbs I stoop to give you."
But some day his hate would be appeased. Yes, some day soon he would kill her!
He shot a sideways glance at her, wondering if by chance she suspected.... She hadn't moved. Her lips were pouted into a half smile; the sex-opera had probably reached one of its more pleasurable moments.
Hyrel let his eyes shift back to the fireplace again. Yes, he would kill her. Then he would claim a rightful share of her money, be rid of her debasing dominance.
He let the
thought run around through his head, savoring it with mental taste buds. He would not kill her tonight. No, nor the next night. He would wait, wait until he had sucked the last measure of pleasure from the thought.
It was like having a bottle of rare old wine on a shelf where it could be viewed daily. It was like being able to pause again and again before the bottle, hold it up to the light, and say to it, "Some day, when my desire for you has reached the ultimate, I shall unstopper you quietly and sip you slowly to the last soul-satisfying drop." As long as the bottle remained there upon the shelf it was symbolic of that pleasurable moment....
He snapped out of his reverie and realized he had been wasting precious moments. There would be time enough tomorrow for gloating. Tonight, there were other things to do. Pleasurable things. He remembered the girl he had met the night before, and smiled smugly. Perhaps she would be awaiting him even now. If not, there would be another one....
He settled himself deeper into the chair, glanced once more at his wife, then let his head lean comfortably back against the chair's headrest. His hand upon his thigh felt the thin mesh that cloaked his body beneath his clothing like a sheer stocking. His fingers went again to the tiny switch. Again he hesitated.
Herbert Hyrel knew no more about the telporter suit he wore than he did about the radio in the corner, the TV set against the wall, or the personalized telovis his wife was wearing. You pressed one of the buttons on the radio; music came out. You pressed a button and clicked a dial on the TV; music and pictures came out. You pressed a button and made an adjustment on the telovis; three-dimensional, emotion-colored pictures leaped into the room. You pressed a tiny switch on the telporter suit; you were whisked away to a receiving set you had previously set up in secret.
He knew that the music and the images of the performers on the TV and telovis were brought to his room by some form of electrical impulse or wave while the actual musicians and performers remained in the studio. He knew that when he pressed the switch on his thigh something within him—his ectoplasm, higher self, the thing spirits use for materialization, whatever its real name—streamed out of him along an invisible channel, leaving his body behind in the chair in a conscious but dream-like state. His other self materialized in a small cabin in a hidden nook between a highway and a river where he had installed the receiving set a month ago.
He thought once more of the girl who might be waiting for him, smiled, and pressed the switch.
The dank air
of the cabin was chill to Herbert Hyrel's naked flesh. He fumbled through the darkness for the clothing he kept there, found his shorts and trousers, got hurriedly into them, then flicked on a pocket lighter and ignited a stub of candle upon the table. By the wavering light, he finished dressing in the black satin clothing, the white shirt, the flowing necktie and tam. He invoiced the contents of his billfold. Not much. And his monthly pittance was still two weeks away....
He had skimped for six months to salvage enough money from his allowance to make a down payment on the telporter suit. Since then, his expenses—monthly payments for the suit, cabin rent, costly liquor—had forced him to place his nights of escape on strict ration. He could not go on this way, he realized. Not now. Not since he had met the girl. He had to have more money. Perhaps he could not afford the luxury of leaving the wine bottle longer upon the shelf....
Riverside Club, where Hyrel arrived by bus and a hundred yards of walking, was exclusive. It catered to a clientele that had but three things in common: money, a desire for utter self-abandonment, and a sales slip indicating ownership of a telporter suit. The club was of necessity expensive, for self-telportation was strictly illegal, and police protection came high.
Herbert Hyrel adjusted his white, silken mask carefully at the door and shoved his sales slip through a small aperture where it was thoroughly scanned by unseen eyes. A buzzer sounded an instant later, the lock on the door clicked, and Hyrel pushed through into the exhilarating warmth of music and laughter.
The main room was large. Hidden lights along the walls sent slow beams of red, blue, vermillion, green, yellow and pink trailing across the domed ceiling in a heterogeneous pattern. The colored beams mingled, diffused, spread, were caught up by mirrors of various tints which diffused and mingled the lights once more until the whole effect was an ever-changing panorama of softly-melting shades.
The gay and bizarre costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden cleverly within the walls.
Hyrel pushed himself to an unoccupied table, sat down and ordered a bottle of cheap whiskey. He would have preferred champagne, but his depleted finances forbade the more discriminate taste.
When his order arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition might prove difficult.
He poured himself another drink, promising himself he would go in search of her when the liquor began to take effect.
A woman clad in the revealing garb of a Persian dancer threw an arm about him from behind and kissed him on the cheek through the veil which covered the lower part of her face.
"Hi, honey," she giggled into his ear. "Havin' a time?"
He reached for the white arm to pull her to him, but she eluded his grasp and reeled away into the waiting arms of a tall toreador. Hyrel gulped his whiskey and watched her nestle into the arms of her partner and begin with him a sinuous, suggestive dance. The whiskey had begun its warming effect, and he laughed.
This was the land of the lotus eaters, the sanctuary of the escapists, the haven of all who wished to cast off their shell of inhibition and become the thing they dreamed themselves to be. Here one could be among his own kind, an actor upon a gay stage, a gaudy butterfly metamorphosed from the slug, a knight of old.
The Persian dancing girl was probably the wife of a boorish oaf whose idea of romance was spending an evening telling his wife how he came to be a successful bank president. But she had found her means of escape. Perhaps she had pleaded a sick headache and had retired to her room. And there upon the bed now reposed her shell of reality while her inner self, the shadowy one, completely materialized, became an exotic thing from the East in this never-never land.
The man, the toreador, had probably closeted himself within his library with a set of account books and had left strict orders not to be disturbed until he had finished with them.
Both would have terrific hangovers in the morning. But that, of course, would be fully compensated for by the memories of the evening.
Hyrel chuckled. The situation struck him as being funny: the shadowy self got drunk and had a good time, and the outer husk suffered the hangover in the morning. Strange. Strange how a device such as the telporter suit could cause the shadow of each bodily cell to leave the body, materialize, and become a reality in its own right. And yet ...
He looked
at the heel of his left hand. There was a long, irregular scar there. It was the result of a cut he had received nearly three weeks ago when he had fallen over this very table and had rammed his hand into a sliver of broken champagne glass. Later that evening, upon re-telporting back home, the pain of the cut had remained in his hand, but there was no sign of the cut itself on the hand of his outer self. The scar was peculiar to the shadowy body only. There was something about the shadowy body that carried the hurts to the outer body, but not the scars....
Sudden laughter broke out near him, and he turned quickly in that direction. A group of gaily costumed revelers was standing in a semi-circle about a small mound of clothing upon the floor. It was the costume of the toreador.
Hyrel laughed, too. It had happened many times before—a costume suddenly left empty as its owner, due to a threat of discovery at home, had had to press the switch in haste to bring his shadowy self—and complete consciousness—back to his outer self in a hurry.
A waiter picked up the clothing. He would put it safely away so that the owner could claim it upon his next visit to the club. Another waiter placed a fresh bottle of whiskey on the table before Hyrel, and Hyrel paid him for it.
The whiskey, reaching his head now in surges of warm cheerfulness, was filling him with abandonment, courage, and a desire for merriment. He pushed himself up from the table, joined the merry throng, threw his arm about the Persian dancer, drew her close.
They began dancing slowly to the throbbing rhythm, dancing and holding on to each other tightly. Hyrel could feel her hot breath through her veil upon his neck, adding to the headiness of the liquor. His feeling of depression and inferiority flowed suddenly from him. Once again he was the all-conquering male.
His arm trembled as it drew her still closer to him and he began dancing directly and purposefully toward the shadows of a clump of artificial palms near one corner of the room. There was an exit to the garden behind the palms.
Half way there they passed a secluded booth from which protruded a long leg clad in black mesh stocking. Hyrel paused as he recognized that part of the costume. It was she! The girl! The one he had met so briefly the night before!
His arm slid away from the Persian dancer, took hold of the mesh-clad leg, and pulled. A female form followed the leg from the booth and fell into his arms. He held her tightly, kissed her white neck, let her perfume send his thoughts reeling.
"Been looking for me, honey?" she whispered, her voice deep and throaty.
"You know it!"
He began whisking her away toward the palms. The Persian girl was pulled into the booth.
Yes, she was wearing the same costume she had worn the night before, that of a can-can dancer of the 90's. The mesh hose that encased her shapely legs were held up by flowered supporters in such a manner as to leave four inches of white leg exposed between hose top and lacy panties. Her skirt, frilled to suggest innumerable petticoats, fell away at each hip, leaving the front open to expose the full length of legs. She wore a wig of platinum hair encrusted with jewels that sparkled in the lights. Her jewel-studded mask was as white as her hair and covered the upper half of her face, except for the large almond slits for her eyes. A white purse, jewel crusted, dangled from one arm.
He stopped once before reaching the palms, drew her closer, kissed her long and ardently. Then he began pulling her on again.
She drew back when they reached the shelter of the fronds.
"Champagne, first," she whispered huskily into his ear.
His heart sank. He had very little money left. Well, it might buy a cheap brand....
She sipped
her champagne slowly and provocatively across the table from him. Her eyes sparkled behind the almond slits of her mask, caught the color changes and cast them back. She was wearing contact lenses of a garish green.
He wished she would hurry with her drink. He had horrible visions of his wife at home taking off her telovis and coming to his chair. He would then have to press the switch that would jerk his shadowy self back along its invisible connecting cord, jerk him back and leave but a small mound of clothes upon the chair at the table.
Deep depression laid hold of him. He would not be able to see her after tonight until he received his monthly dole two weeks hence. She wouldn't wait that long. Someone else would have her.
Unless ...
Yes, he knew now that he was going to kill his wife as soon as the opportunity presented itself. It would be a simple matter. With the aid of the telporter suit, he could establish an iron-clad alibi.
He took a long drink of whiskey and looked at the dancers about him. Sight of their gay costumes heightened his depression. He was wearing a cheap suit of satin, all he could afford. But some day soon he would show them! Some time soon he would be dressed as gaily....
"Something troubling you, honey?"
His gaze shot back to her and she blurred slightly before his eyes.
"No. Nothing at all!" He summoned a sickly smile and clutched her hand in his. "Come on. Let's dance."
He drew her from the chair and into his arms. She melted toward him as if desiring to become a part of him. A tremor of excitement surged through him and threatened to turn his knees into quivering jelly. He could not make his feet conform to the flooding rhythm of the music. He half stumbled, half pushed her along past the booths.
In the shelter of the palms he drew her savagely to him. "Let's—let's go outside." His voice was little more than a croak.
"But, honey!" She pushed herself away, her low voice maddening him. "Don't you have a private room? A girl doesn't like to be taken outside...."
Her words bit into his brain like the blade of a hot knife.
No, he didn't have a private room at the club like the others. A private room for his telporter receiver, a private room where he could take a willing guest. No! He couldn't afford it! No! No! NO! His lot was a cheap suit of satin! Cheap whiskey! Cheap champagne! A cheap shack by the river....
An inarticulate cry escaped his twisted lips. He clutched her roughly to him and dragged her through the door and into the moonlight, whiskey and anger lending him brutal strength.
He pulled her through the deserted garden. All the others had private rooms! He pulled her to the far end, behind a clump of squatty firs. His hands clawed at her. He tried to smother her mouth with kisses.
She eluded him deftly. "But, honey !" Her voice had gone deeper into her throat. "I just want to be sure about things. If you can't afford one of the private rooms—if you can't afford to show me a good time—if you can't come here real often ..."
The whiskey pounded and throbbed at his brain like blows from an unseen club. His ego curled and twisted within him like a headless serpent.
"I'll have money!" he shouted, struggling to hold her. "I'll have plenty of money! After tonight!"
"Then we'll wait," she said.
"We'll wait until tomorrow night."
"No!" he screamed. "You don't believe me! You're like the others! You think I'm no good! But I'll show you! I'll show all of you!"
She had gone
coldly rigid in his arms, unyielding.
Madness added to the pounding in his brain. Tears welled into his eyes.
"I'll show you! I'll kill her! Then I'll have money!" The hands clutching her shoulders shook her drunkenly. "You wait here! I'll go home and kill her now! Then I'll be back!"
"Silly boy!" Her low laughter rang hollowly in his ears. "And just who is it you are going to kill?"
"My wife!" he cried. "My wife! I'll ..."
A sudden sobering thought struck him. He was talking too much. And he wasn't making sense. He shouldn't be telling her this. Anyway, he couldn't get the money tonight even if he did kill his wife.
"And so you are going to kill your wife...."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. His chest was heaving, his heart pounding. He looked at her shimmering form. "Y-yes," he whispered.
Her eyes glinted strangely in the light of the moon. Her handbag glinted as she opened it, and something she took from it glittered coldly in her hand.
"Fool!"
The first shot tore squarely through his heart. And while he stood staring at her, mouth agape, a second shot burned its way through his bewildered brain.
Mrs. Herbert Hyrel
removed the telovis from her head and laid it carefully aside. She uncoiled her long legs from beneath her, walked to her husband's chair, and stood for a long moment looking down at him, her lips drawn back in contempt. Then she bent over him and reached down his thigh until her fingers contacted the small switch.
Seconds later, a slight tremor shook Hyrel's body. His eyes snapped open, air escaped his lungs, his lower jaw sagged inanely, and his head lolled to one side.
She stood a moment longer, watching his eyes become glazed and sightless. Then she walked to the telephone.
"Police?" she said. "This is Mrs. Herbert Hyrel. Something horrible has happened to my husband. Please come over immediately. Bring a doctor."
She hung up, went to her bathroom, stripped off her clothing, and slid carefully out of her telporter suit. This she folded neatly and tucked away into the false back of the medicine cabinet. She found a fresh pair of blue, plastifur pajamas and got into them.
She was just arriving back into the living room, tying the cord of her dressing gown about her slim waist, when she heard the sound of the police siren out front.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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Describe the structure of the society in this story
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Time In the Round by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
Question:
Describe the structure of the society in this story
Answer:
|
[
"This society is organized around a reconditioning of thoughts that happens as children transition into adulthood, starting at age six. Adults who have already been reconditioned are passive and polite members of society, who supposedly do not have traces of violent tendencies anymore. Before this, however, there are a few levels of separation from the rest of the society. Five year olds are allowed to go to the Time Theater to view whatever is showing through the Time Bubble, a view into other societies throughout time, but anyone younger than five is not allowed. This is presumably because of safety concerns--Hal thinks that young children are a nuisance to adults in these settings. The society has a number of systems in place specifically for these younger children who have not yet been conditioned. There are things called death games and fear houses, which we do not see details of in this story, that are meant to clear out the childrens' emotional space. It also seems that uninjes, the robotic dogs that the boys have, are also for this purpose: Hal says that they are part of the society's options for letting kids work out their ruthless and inconsiderate impulses. These impulses are restructured when they are aimed at other people, but violent alien beings and viruses or other medical concerns are still considered threats worth responding to in full force. The particular focus on avoiding violent patterns seen in other civilizations is highlighted by the grand nature of the Time Theater, and its position at the end of a major street in a large public park.",
"In “Time in the Round,” the society is structured around perfection. Small children are given breakables, and those items are the only things that are physically capable of being broken. There are dirt-pens for kids to play in, and besides those areas, children are incapable of becoming dirty. The dirt-pens are only available to children aged 2 and younger. The society’s dogs, uninjes, are programmed not to bite or hurt the people, even when they are hit or stabbed themselves. They do not react like normal canines. \n\nYoung children are considered to be self-centered and ruthless, and they are provided with death games and fear houses to get out their emotions and prepare to be conditioned as adults. When children turn six years old, they feel differently than they did before. They are ready to enter the Time Theater and view the Time Bubble. They are taught about pre-civilization and the important differences between their own society and the past. They learn how to reject violent solutions to problems and live in peace. \n",
"The structure of society is based on age, and very specific behaviors are allowed and prohibited at different ages. Very young children are allowed to play and get dirty, but after a certain age they are no longer allowed to do so. Certain ages are considered too young for certain ideas, and aren’t allowed in the Time Building or are only allowed in certain parts of it. Younger children are sometimes called “cubs”, and it seems to be commonplace for older members of society to treat younger members with sweet derision. This society puts a strong emphasis on maturity and carefully controls what people are allowed to do at what ages and when they are allowed to learn concepts or do activities. The core principle is nonviolence but the results are near-total uniformity and strict constraints. \n",
"The society the main characters inhabit is post-violence. While children below five are given uninjes, death games, and fear houses in order to clear their emotions, adults are systematically re-programmed to believe that violence has no place in this new society. While violence is never used to resolve conflicts between humans, the Space Fleet will still use violence in defense against alien enemies. There are a number of protections in place to prevent violence upon humans from repulsor shields to the protective uninjes. The bubble at the Time Theater offers adults and those with the appropriate mental facilities a view into the pre-civilization world so that they may learn from the past and understand why a lack of violence became necessary in the new society."
] |
51380
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TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Time In the Round by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story starts in a park, where we meet a a young boy who goes by the Butcher (\"Butch\"), and his dog Brute. The boy is trying to do something to the dog with a small metal tube when Hal, another boy, shows up with his own dogs, and another boy named Joggy. It turns out these are not normal dogs, but are \"uninj\", machines created to be like dogs but not able to be hurt. Butch seems bored with these countermeasures against violence, and intent on putting violence back in the world. His interactions with Hal show us that they live in a civilization where the children are given opportunities to work out any violent and angry tendencies or impulses before they are conditioned as adults. They are only allowed to visit the Time Theater to see glimpses into other societies (and thus evidence of violence) after age five, and the change in mentality happens at age six. Butch wants to use Time Bubble to travel through time, but Hal insists that this is impossible. The boys head to this theater, an incredible crystal building with an important place in this society, choosing to fly there with their hover technology. Joggy is five, so he is allowed to enter with Hal, but Butch is blocked from entering by the ushers, which Hal says is for his own protection. Joggy and Hal take a seat in a children's viewing area to look into the glowing orb of light that sits in the middle of the round theater. The orb acts as a viewport into various times and places, and is currently showing a view of Earth, Scandanavia more specifically, around year zero according to Earth calendars. There are a number of warriors in the forest scene, along with some dogs and a sorcerer, and the boys watch in earnest. As the electronic interpreter for the viewing gives the boys more information about cultural context, Butch manages to sneak in to the theater by lying to the ushers. Shortly after Butch and two young girls join the viewing, something happened that no-one thought possible: the sorcerer pushed one of the warriors through the orb of the Time Bubble, throwing him into the theater. Panic falls on the audience, and warriors and dogs continue to enter the theater as Butch and the uninjes start to fight off the time-travelers with their design keeping them from being injured. Hal is convinced that this happened because an under-five (Butch specifically) was in the theater, but the rest of the public does not know he is young and they thank him for saving the day as he fights off the warriors and the Time Bubble collapses. This is the first piece of chaos the adults have experienced in their adult lives, and the Butcher is content with how it all played out, getting to play hero in a violent setting for a day with Brute.",
"Brute, a dog made of hyperplastic, barks without making a noise. He is an uninje. He is programmed to be very similar to a real dog, but he is incapable of being injured. His owner, a boy named Butch, tackles him and pokes him in the eye and hits him. Butch then orders all of the dogs to fight, but becomes bored moments later. He tells his friends, Joggy and Hal that he wishes he lived like Huckleberry Finn, with the ability to get dirty and inflict pain.\n\nButch says that one day he will be the World Director, and he will bring back war. Hal, who is older and more mature, explains that Butch’s desire for violence will be conditioned out of him once he turns six. He says that Butch will understand everything once he’s allowed in the Time Theater to see into the past. \n\nHal and Joggy decide to go to the Time Theater. Butch climbs on Joggy’s back, and they use Joggy’s harness and the repulsor hemisphere to propel them forward. When the boys arrive, they warn Butch that he will be stopped by the usher. Hal explains that something dangerous might happen if a young child is allowed in. The uninjes line up obediently next to Butch. \n\nButch tries to get past the invisible wall keeping him out of the theater, but he can’t. Meanwhile, Hal and Joggy enter a dilated sphincter and sit down in a transparent cubicle. They take their levitators off to enjoy the show in the dark auditorium. In the center of the room is the Time Bubble, which transmits images of the past. They watch Scandinavian warriors holding long swords, surrounded by dogs, listening to a hooded figure chant.\nJoggy has several questions about the show, and the interpreter in the room answers them. He wonders why light can’t escape from the Bubble and why the warriors in the picture can’t step through into the theater.\nButch appears beside his friends after he tricks his way into the theater. The Time Bubble becomes incredibly bright, and suddenly, the warrior appears outside of the Bubble. The interpreter warns the crowd that he’s activating the safeguards in response. Hal blames the anomaly on Butch. \nOne of the warriors grabs a woman in the front row and picks her up. Butch refuses to sit by idly and approaches the warrior with his levitator over his head. When the warrior tries to strike Butch with his sword, he finds that the boy is protected by an invisible shield. Butch commands the uninjes to attack the warriors and their dogs, and they do. The warriors are scared of the uninjes’ strength and their ability to withstand their swords. The warriors’ leader commands them to get back in the Time Bubble. The Interpreter explains that he must collapse the Bubble due to this crisis. The woman who was taken by the warrior hugs and kisses Butch for saving her life. He is very proud of himself. \n",
"Butch, Hal, and Joggy, are three kids of varying ages: Joggy is five, Butch is under five, and Hal is older. Butch exhibits a lot of frustration toward their non-violent and heavily age-regimented society. He says he’s going to be World Director, and seems to want to be a dictator like those from the time before humanity conditioned out violence. \n\nButch goes with the other boys to Time in the Round, a place where they can see events from the past and have them explained. Because it is carefully curated for specific ages, Hal tells Butch he won’t be able to enter. Butch tries anyway, but an invisible blockade they call an “usher” won’t let him through. \n\nThe other boys watch a sorcerer and some warriors inside the Time Bubble. Before too long, Butch appears, telling them he lied his way in with a sympathetic adult. Hal is upset that he did this, and also by Butch’s behavior once he’s in there. Though they have been told that it would be impossible for the Time Bubble to be used for time travel, Butch yells at the sorcerer to “sock it to ‘em” and he listens; somehow, between Butch and the sorcerer’s willpower, a few of the warriors end up outside the bubble and in the auditorium, along with their wolves. The interpreter and audience start to panic. \n\nButch takes control, order his and his friends’ uninjs to attack the wolves, who are larger but not invincible like the uninjs. He orders a warrior to put down a lady he has slung over his shoulder and his uninj, Brute, bites the warrior in the ankle, causing him to drop her. Butch tells them to go back where they came from and Brute chases them back into the bubble. Butch calls Brute, and as soon as he jumps back out the bubble dims and goes back to normal. \n\nEveryone is relieved, and the adults are more talkative and less “mature” than usual. People discuss “revised theories” and both the formerly captive woman and Brute embrace and kiss Butch, but he is too dazed and happy to notice. He pets Brute and says “we came, we saw, we conquered, didn’t we, Brute?” \n",
"A young boy named Butch plays with his pet--a dog-like, robotic \"uninj\" named Brute--along the Avenue of Wisdom in the Peace Park. Butch is rough with Brute, jabbing and poking him hard with a metal tube, but his friends Joggy and Hal come along and we learn uninjes cannot be harmed nor can they harm. They have been programmed against it. This is just one element in a post-violence world; adults have been systemically programmed against using violence to resolve conflicts between themselves, although they may use it to fight against alien enemies. Butch, however, insists his friends call him \"Butcher\" because he wants to become a dictator when he is older and bring back violence as a means of conflict resolution. His friend Hal assures him that when he is older, he will understand why removing violence from society was \"Man's greatest achievement.\" The boys make their way to the Time Theater at the end of the Avenue of Wisdom by utilizing levitators that help them swim through the air. The Time Theater is home to a large bubble that functions as a one-way viewer into pre-civilization eras. Only people over five years old are allowed into the Time Theater; the Butcher is stopped by an invisible \"usher\", leaving Hal and Joggy to enter the viewing cubicle alone. Once inside, the bubble interpreter and Hal explain to Joggy how the bubble functions. It is essentially a time-hole that allows observation because of light isotopes that leak through. But matter cannot pass through the bubble, which is why it cannot be used for time travel. However, some scientists theorize that people with impulsive minds, such as underage children, might activate a time-traveling capability. The Butcher tricks an adult into carrying him into the Time Theater, and he joins Joggy and Hal in their viewing of a group of barbaric Scandinavian men from the Dawn Era. They watch as a sorcerer conducts some kind of spell with the Butcher egging him on. The Butcher's impulsive behavior combined with the sorcerer's ability to see into the future unlocks the bubble, and the sorcerer pushes the Scandinavian men through into the Time Theater. There, they begin to attack the adults present and attempt to kidnap a woman in the audience. The Butcher commands the uninjes to attack the men, and he stuns them with his use of the levitator to protect his head from the blows of their swords. The uninjes push the men back through the bubble, where they kill the sorcerer and the interpreter closes the bubble. Its automatic safeguards have failed, and the Butcher has saved the day."
] |
51380
|
TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
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What is the role of technology in this society?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Time In the Round by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
Question:
What is the role of technology in this society?
Answer:
|
[
"There are two major types of technology highlighted in the story: the first is the mechanical kind that allows for hovering travel, the development of uninjes, and the systems in place in the theater like the ushers and the protective mechanisms. The other major thing that could be categorized as technology is the Time Bubble itself; it acts as a form of entertainment but also as a warning to avoid the habits of people of the past. Focusing on the engineering technology that does not directly relate to potential time-travel, it is strongly hinted that the children in the story might be partly mechanical themselves, though this is not clarified. It is pointed out that there are \"adolescers\" and \"kinderobots\", which could be referring to the age groups of these children, and the dogs that follow the people around are also technological creations. The \"uninjes\" are like dogs, and are built to have canine reactions to be as close to real dogs as possible, but cannot be harmed and in the end are still collections of circuits with a battery and molded plastic. There are a number of pieces of technology in the theater, including forcefields used by ushers to block children who are too young to enter, and a number of safeguards like forcefields to protect people inc ase something went wrong with the Time Bubble. The bubble itself is a marvel of technology but nobody understands exactly how it works. Most of the discourse surrounding this is about the theories of time travel. ",
"The technology in this world helps the children and people from getting injured. The boys use metal harnesses, levitators, and the hemisphere repulsor to keep them from hitting their bodies against trees, the ground, walls, or anything else that could potentially inflict pain. These technologies create an invisible shield around them and gently bounce them away from objects. \n\nThe Time Theater is a very important place that houses the society’s Time Bubble, their most prized possession. It allows the adults to feel like gods because they are able to look back at any time or place and recognize how much their society has improved from simpler times. Upon entering the theater, Hal and Joggy feel a shock of electricity. Butch, however, is repelled by an invisible wall that knows he is not yet of age to enter the sacred space. There is also technology to keep the children separated from the adults in the theater. \n \nThe electronic interpreter in the theater helps the audience members understand what it is they’re seeing and how the machine works. It is capable of hearing the audience members’ questions and it quickly provides answers. \nThe Time Bubble is supposed to keep everything, even light, from entering the theater. It is only supposed to give viewers a look into the past, not a real experience. Some scientists in the society believe that the Time Bubble uses real peoples’ memories to time travel. The Time Bubble malfunctions and allows the Scandinavian warriors in the Bubble to enter the theater. The men from the past are shocked when they see that Butch is protected by an invisible shield and the uninjes are incapable of being injured the way real dogs would. \nThe society’s new technology saves the audience members’ lives from a real attack from people of the past. Even when their technology malfunctions, they are able to protect themselves from the swords and wolvish dogs. \n",
"Technology is a huge part of this society, as it prevents bloodshed and is central to their way of life. Hal mentions fear houses and death games, as well as the invincible robot dogs known as uninjs. He explains that over time humans have been conditioned to reject violence. He also mentions a Space Fleet that they rely on in case of an outside attack. This society has also created a setting that is difficult or impossible to tarnish or disrupt. The children use levitators to “swim” through the air, and the Time Bubble is used as a source of historical exposure (and possibly propaganda). Until Butch is able to use the Time Bubble for actual space travel, the primary role of technology in this society seems to be to maintain peace, pleasantness, and control. \n",
"Technology plays an important role in the story, particularly as a buffer against violence in the new civilization as well as a window into the pre-civilization era. The boys use special levitation devices to swim through the air; these devices also release a kind of repulsor shield that protects them from running into things while they're swimming such as trees. The Butcher later utilizes this technology to protect himself against the sword attacks of the Scandinavian men when they are pushed through the bubble into the Time Theater. The uninjes are robotic canines that cannot be hurt and are programmed against hurting humans themselves. However, they also protect the humans against the attacks of the Scandinavian men later in the story. The Time Theater utilizes time-hole technology to open windows into previous eras for observation and study, and the interpreter intuits viewers' questions and answers them in real-time. The \"usher\" is a kind of force field as well, which has the ability to determine a person's age as they attempt to pass through it. All of this technology is imperfect, and, as the Butcher later demonstrates, malleable if in the hands of someone with impulsive instincts."
] |
51380
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TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
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Describe what "pre-civilization" means in the context of this story
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Time In the Round by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
Question:
Describe what "pre-civilization" means in the context of this story
Answer:
|
[
"The term pre-civilization points to anything that has a sense of violence or chaos in the lives of adults. For instance, raised voices and people talking over each other is considered pre-civilization, but so are violent wars. The society is built to get rid of these tendencies in children and recondition them as adults to be calm and peaceful members of society. When the Butcher is referred to as looking pre-civilization at the beginning of the story, it is because he seems to be up to something he isn't supposed to do, as he is potentially hurting or controlling Brute in some way with the use of a metal tube. ",
"In “Time in the Round,” the society is structured around perfection. Small children are given breakables, and those items are the only things that are physically capable of being broken. There are dirt-pens for kids to play in, and besides those areas, children are incapable of becoming dirty. The dirt-pens are only available to children aged 2 and younger. The society’s dogs, uninjes, are programmed not to bite or hurt the people, even when they are hit or stabbed themselves. They do not react like normal canines. \n\nYoung children are considered to be self-centered and ruthless, and they are provided with death games and fear houses to get out their emotions and prepare to be conditioned as adults. When children turn six years old, they feel differently than they did before. They are ready to enter the Time Theater and view the Time Bubble. They are taught about pre-civilization and the important differences between their own society and the past. They learn how to reject violent solutions to problems and live in peace. Even yelling is considered a pre-civilization act. When Butch enters the Time Theater and tries to get the Scandinavian warrior’s attention, he is using someithing called a “pre-civilization voice”. The Time Bubble is a tool that society uses to remind its current citizens what humans used to act barbarically, and that is not longer appropriate. \n",
"Pre-civilization seems to refer to the society that we know, and any society that predates the decision to make violence impossible and to control all aspects of societal behavior. Hal describes the process of conditioning humanity to reject violence in all forms, and pre-civilization points to a time before that process was undertaken. For example, Butch is referred to as “pre-civilization” when he continually abuses an uninj at the beginning of the story, because he is behaving in a violent way. He is described this way again at the end of the story when he is shouting battle orders. \n",
"Pre-civilization primarily refers to the time before the post-violent society where the central action of the story takes place. They are able to view this era by using the time-hole technology of the bubble on display at the Time Theater in the Peace Park at the end of the Avenue of Wisdom. \"Pre-civilization\" is characterized by famous historical figures such as Hitler, Stalin, and Tamerlane--individuals that the Butcher idealizes for their use of violence in resolving conflict. The climax of the story revolves around a viewing of Scandinavian men of the Dawn Era gone wrong when the simultaneous workings of a sorcerer and the Butcher's impulsive mind allow the Scandinavian men to pass through the bubble into the Time Theater. The ensuing battle highlights the barbarism of the Dawn Era--they use swords and real dogs in battle; it also demonstrates the Butcher's ability to weaponize technology meant to oppose violence as a way to protect this new society."
] |
51380
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TIME IN THE ROUND
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Poor Butcher suffered more than any dictator in history: everybody gave in to him because he was so puny and they were so impregnable!
From the other end of the Avenue of Wisdom that led across the Peace Park, a gray, hairless, heavily built dog was barking soundlessly at the towering crystal glory of the Time Theater. For a moment, the effect was almost frightening: a silent picture of the beginning of civilization challenging the end of it. Then a small boy caught up with the dog and it rolled over enthusiastically at his feet and the scene was normal again.
The small boy, however, seemed definitely pre-civilization. He studied the dog coldly and then inserted a thin metal tube under its eyelid and poked. The dog wagged its stumpy tail. The boy frowned, tightened his grip on the tube and jabbed hard. The dog's tail thumped the cushiony pavement and the four paws beat the air. The boy shortened his grip and suddenly jabbed the dog several times in the stomach. The stiff tube rebounded from the gray, hairless hide. The dog's face split in an upside-down grin, revealing formidable ivory fangs across which a long black tongue lolled.
The boy regarded the tongue speculatively and pocketed the metal tube with a grimace of utter disgust. He did not look up when someone called: "Hi, Butch! Sic 'em, Darter, sic 'em!"
A larger small boy and a somewhat older one were approaching across the luxurious, neatly cropped grass, preceded by a hurtling shape that, except for a black hide, was a replica of Butch's gray dog.
Butch shrugged his shoulders resignedly and said in a bored voice:
"Kill 'em, Brute."
The gray dog hurled itself on Darter. Jaws gaped to get a hold on necks so short and thick as to be mere courtesy terms. They whirled like a fanged merry-go-round. Three more dogs, one white, one slate blue and one pink, hurried up and tried to climb aboard.
Butch yawned.
"What's the matter?" inquired Darter's master. "I thought you liked dog fights, Butch."
"I do like dog fights," Butch said somberly, without looking around. "I don't like uninj fights. They're just a pretend, like everything else. Nobody gets hurt. And look here, Joggy—and you, too, Hal—when you talk to me, don't just say Butch. It's the Butcher, see?"
"That's not exactly a functional name," Hal observed with the judiciousness of budding maturity, while Joggy said agreeably: "All right, Butcher, I suppose you'd like to have lived way back when people were hurting each other all the time so the blood came out?"
"I certainly would," the Butcher replied. As Joggy and Hal turned back skeptically to watch the fight, he took out the metal tube, screwed up his face in a dreadful frown and jabbed himself in the hand. He squeaked with pain and whisked the tube out of sight.
"A kid can't do anything any more," he announced dramatically. "Can't break anything except the breakables they give him to break on purpose. Can't get dirty except in the dirt-pen—and they graduate him from that when he's two. Can't even be bitten by an uninj—it's contraprogrammed."
"Where'd you ever get so fixated on dirt?" Hal asked in a gentle voice acquired from a robot adolescer.
"I've been reading a book about a kid called Huckleberry Finn," the Butcher replied airily. "A swell book. That guy got dirtier than anything." His eyes became dreamy. "He even ate out of a garbage pail."
"What's a garbage pail?"
"I don't know, but it sounds great."
The battling uninjes careened into them. Brute had Darter by the ear and was whirling him around hilariously.
"Aw, quit it, Brute," the Butcher said in annoyance.
Brute obediently loosed his hold and returned to his master, paying no attention to his adversary's efforts to renew the fight.
The Butcher looked Brute squarely in the eyes. "You're making too much of a rumpus," he said. "I want to think."
He kicked Brute in the face. The dog squirmed joyously at his feet.
"Look," Joggy said, "you wouldn't hurt an uninj, for instance, would you?"
"How can you hurt something that's uninjurable?" the Butcher demanded scathingly. "An uninj isn't really a dog. It's just a lot of circuits and a micropack bedded in hyperplastic." He looked at Brute with guarded wistfulness.
"I don't know about that," Hal put in. "I've heard an uninj is programmed with so many genuine canine reactions that it practically has racial memory."
"I mean if you could hurt an uninj," Joggy amended.
"Well, maybe I wouldn't," the Butcher admitted grudgingly. "But shut up—I want to think."
"About what?" Hal asked with saintly reasonableness.
The Butcher achieved a fearful frown. "When I'm World Director," he said slowly, "I'm going to have warfare again."
"You think so now," Hal told him. "We all do at your age."
"We do not," the Butcher retorted. "I bet you didn't."
"Oh, yes, I was foolish, too," the older boy confessed readily. "All newborn organisms are self-centered and inconsiderate and ruthless. They have to be. That's why we have uninjes to work out on, and death games and fear houses, so that our emotions are cleared for adult conditioning. And it's just the same with newborn civilizations. Why, long after atom power and the space drive were discovered, people kept having wars and revolutions. It took ages to condition them differently. Of course, you can't appreciate it this year, but Man's greatest achievement was when he learned to automatically reject all violent solutions to problems. You'll realize that when you're older."
"I will not!" the Butcher countered hotly. "I'm not going to be a sissy." Hal and Joggy blinked at the unfamiliar word. "And what if we were attacked by bloodthirsty monsters from outside the Solar System?"
"The Space Fleet would take care of them," Hal replied calmly. "That's what it's for. Adults aren't conditioned to reject violent solutions to problems where non-human enemies are concerned. Look at what we did to viruses."
"But what if somebody got at us through the Time Bubble?"
"They can't. It's impossible."
"Yes, but suppose they did all the same."
"You've never been inside the Time Theater—you're not old enough yet—so you just can't know anything about it or about the reasons why it's impossible," Hal replied with friendly factuality. "The Time Bubble is just a viewer. You can only look through it, and just into the past, at that. But you can't travel through it because you can't change the past. Time traveling is a lot of kid stuff."
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted obstinately. "I'm still going to have warfare when I'm World Director."
"They'll condition you out of the idea," Hal assured him.
"They will not. I won't let 'em."
"It doesn't matter what you think now," Hal said with finality. "You'll have an altogether different opinion when you're six."
"Well, what if I will?" the Butcher snapped back. "You don't have to keep telling me about it, do you?"
The others were silent. Joggy began to bounce up and down abstractedly on the resilient pavement. Hal called in his three uninjes and said in soothing tones: "Joggy and I are going to swim over to the Time Theater. Want to walk us there, Butch?"
Butch scowled.
"How about it, Butch?"
Still Butch did not seem to hear.
The older boy shrugged and said: "Oh, well, how about it—Butcher?"
The Butcher swung around. "They won't let me in the Time Theater. You said so yourself."
"You could walk us over there."
"Well, maybe I will and maybe I won't."
"While you're deciding, we'll get swimming. Come along, Joggy."
Still scowling, the Butcher took a white soapy crayon from the bulging pocket in his silver shorts. Pressed into the pavement, it made a black mark. He scrawled pensively: KEEP ON THE GRASS.
He gazed at his handiwork. No, darn it, that was just what grownups wanted you to do. This grass couldn't be hurt. You couldn't pull it up or tear it off; it hurt your fingers to try. A rub with the side of the crayon removed the sign. He thought for a moment, then wrote: KEEP OFF THE GRASS.
With an untroubled countenance, he sprang up and hurried after the others.
Joggy and the older boy were swimming lazily through the air at shoulder height. In the pavement directly under each of them was a wide, saucer-shaped depression which swam along with them. The uninjes avoided the depressions. Darter was strutting on his hind legs, looking up inquiringly at his master.
"Gimme a ride, Hal, gimme a ride!" the Butcher called. The older boy ignored him. "Aw, gimme a ride, Joggy."
"Oh, all right." Joggy touched the small box attached to the front of his broad metal harness and dropped lightly to the ground. The Butcher climbed on his back. There was a moment of rocking and pitching, during which each boy accused the other of trying to upset them.
Then the Butcher got his balance and they began to swim along securely, though at a level several inches lower. Brute sprang up after his master and was invisibly rebuffed. He retired baffled, but a few minutes later, he was amusing himself by furious futile efforts to climb the hemispherical repulsor field.
Slowly the little cavalcade of boys and uninjes proceeded down the Avenue of Wisdom. Hal amused himself by stroking toward a tree. When he was about four feet from it, he was gently bounced away.
It was really a more tiring method of transportation than walking and quite useless against the wind. True, by rocking the repulsor hemisphere backward, you could get a brief forward push, but it would be nullified when you rocked forward. A slow swimming stroke was the simplest way to make progress.
The general sensation, however, was delightful and levitators were among the most prized of toys.
"There's the Theater," Joggy announced.
"I know ," the Butcher said irritably.
But even he sounded a little solemn and subdued. From the Great Ramp to the topmost airy finial, the Time Theater was the dream of a god realized in unearthly substance. It imparted the aura of demigods to the adults drifting up and down the ramp.
"My father remembers when there wasn't a Time Theater," Hal said softly as he scanned the facade's glowing charts and maps. "Say, they're viewing Earth, somewhere in Scandinavia around zero in the B.C.-A.D. time scale. It should be interesting."
"Will it be about Napoleon?" the Butcher asked eagerly. "Or Hitler?" A red-headed adult heard and smiled and paused to watch. A lock of hair had fallen down the middle of the Butcher's forehead, and as he sat Joggy like a charger, he did bear a faint resemblance to one of the grim little egomaniacs of the Dawn Era.
"Wrong millennium," Hal said.
"Tamerlane then?" the Butcher pressed. "He killed cities and piled the skulls. Blood-bath stuff. Oh, yes, and Tamerlane was a Scand of the Navies."
Hal looked puzzled and then quickly erased the expression. "Well, even if it is about Tamerlane, you can't see it. How about it, Joggy?"
"They won't let me in, either."
"Yes, they will. You're five years old now."
"But I don't feel any older," Joggy replied doubtfully.
"The feeling comes at six. Don't worry, the usher will notice the difference."
Hal and Joggy switched off their levitators and dropped to their feet. The Butcher came down rather hard, twisting an ankle. He opened his mouth to cry, then abruptly closed it hard, bearing his pain in tight-lipped silence like an ancient soldier—like Stalin, maybe, he thought. The red-headed adult's face twitched in half-humorous sympathy.
Hal and Joggy mounted the Ramp and entered a twilit corridor which drank their faint footsteps and returned pulses of light. The Butcher limped manfully after them, but when he got inside, he forgot his battle injury.
Hal looked back. "Honestly, the usher will stop you."
The Butcher shook his head. "I'm going to think my way in. I'm going to think old."
"You won't be able to fool the usher, Butcher. You under-fives simply aren't allowed in the Time Theater. There's a good reason for it—something dangerous might happen if an under-five got inside."
"Why?"
"I don't exactly know, but something."
"Hah! I bet they're scared we'd go traveling in the Time Bubble and have some excitement."
"They are not. I guess they just know you'd get bored and wander away from your seats and maybe disturb the adults or upset the electronics or something. But don't worry about it, Butcher. The usher will take care of you."
"Shut up—I'm thinking I'm World Director," the Butcher informed them, contorting his face diabolically.
Hal spoke to the uninjes, pointing to the side of the corridor. Obediently four of them lined up.
But Brute was peering down the corridor toward where it merged into a deeper darkness. His short legs stiffened, his neckless head seemed to retreat even further between his powerful shoulders, his lips writhed back to show his gleaming fangs, and a completely unfamiliar sound issued from his throat. A choked, grating sound. A growl. The other uninjes moved uneasily.
"Do you suppose something's the matter with his circuits?" Joggy whispered. "Maybe he's getting racial memories from the Scands."
"Of course not," Hal said irritably.
"Brute, get over there," the Butcher commanded. Unwillingly, eyes still fixed on the blackness ahead, Brute obeyed.
The three boys started on. Hal and Joggy experienced a vaguely electrical tingling that vanished almost immediately. They looked back. The Butcher had been stopped by an invisible wall.
"I told you you couldn't fool the usher," Hal said.
The Butcher hurled himself forward. The wall gave a little, then bounced him back with equal force.
"I bet it'll be a bum time view anyway," the Butcher said, not giving up, but not trying again. "And I still don't think the usher can tell how old you are. I bet there's an over-age teacher spying on you through a hole, and if he doesn't like your looks, he switches on the usher."
But the others had disappeared in the blackness. The Butcher waited and then sat down beside the uninjes. Brute laid his head on his knee and growled faintly down the corridor.
"Take it easy, Brute," the Butcher consoled him. "I don't think Tamerlane was really a Scand of the Navies anyhow."
Two chattering girls hardly bigger than himself stepped through the usher as if it weren't there.
The Butcher grimly slipped out the metal tube and put it to his lips. There were two closely spaced faint plops and a large green stain appeared on the bare back of one girl, while purple fluid dripped from the close-cropped hair of the other.
They glared at him and one of them said: "A cub!" But he had his arms folded and wasn't looking at them.
Meanwhile, subordinate ushers had guided Hal and Joggy away from the main entrance to the Time Theater. A sphincter dilated and they found themselves in a small transparent cubicle from which they could watch the show without disturbing the adult audience. They unstrapped their levitators, laid them on the floor and sat down.
The darkened auditorium was circular. Rising from a low central platform was a huge bubble of light, its lower surface somewhat flattened. The audience was seated in concentric rows around the bubble, their keen and compassionate faces dimly revealed by the pale central glow.
But it was the scene within the bubble that riveted the attention of the boys.
Great brooding trees, the trunks of the nearer ones sliced by the bubble's surface, formed the background. Through the dark, wet foliage appeared glimpses of a murky sky, while from the ceiling of the bubble, a ceaseless rain dripped mournfully. A hooded figure crouched beside a little fire partly shielded by a gnarled trunk. Squatting round about were wiry, blue-eyed men with shoulder-length blond hair and full blond beards. They were clothed in furs and metal-studded leather.
Here and there were scattered weapons and armor—long swords glistening with oil to guard them from rust, crudely painted circular shields, and helmets from which curved the horns of beasts. Back and forth, lean, wolflike dogs paced with restless monotony.
Sometimes the men seemed to speak together, or one would rise to peer down the misty forest vistas, but mostly they were motionless. Only the hooded figure, which they seemed to regard with a mingled wonder and fear, swayed incessantly to the rhythm of some unheard chant.
"The Time Bubble has been brought to rest in one of the barbaric cultures of the Dawn Era," a soft voice explained, so casually that Joggy looked around for the speaker, until Hal nudged him sharply, whispering with barely perceptible embarrassment: "Don't do that, Joggy. It's just the electronic interpreter. It senses our development and hears our questions and then it automats background and answers. But it's no more alive than an adolescer or a kinderobot. Got a billion microtapes, though."
The interpreter continued: "The skin-clad men we are viewing in Time in the Round seem to be a group of warriors of the sort who lived by pillage and rapine. The hooded figure is a most unusual find. We believe it to be that of a sorcerer who pretended to control the forces of nature and see into the future."
Joggy whispered: "How is it that we can't see the audience through the other side of the bubble? We can see through this side, all right."
"The bubble only shines light out," Hal told him hurriedly, to show he knew some things as well as the interpreter. "Nothing, not even light, can get into the bubble from outside. The audience on the other side of the bubble sees into it just as we do, only they're seeing the other way—for instance, they can't see the fire because the tree is in the way. And instead of seeing us beyond, they see more trees and sky."
Joggy nodded. "You mean that whatever way you look at the bubble, it's a kind of hole through time?"
"That's right." Hal cleared his throat and recited: "The bubble is the locus of an infinite number of one-way holes, all centering around two points in space-time, one now and one then. The bubble looks completely open, but if you tried to step inside, you'd be stopped—and so would an atom beam. It takes more energy than an atom beam just to maintain the bubble, let alone maneuver it."
"I see, I guess," Joggy whispered. "But if the hole works for light, why can't the people inside the bubble step out of it into our world?"
"Why—er—you see, Joggy—"
The interpreter took over. "The holes are one-way for light, but no-way for matter. If one of the individuals inside the bubble walked toward you, he would cross-section and disappear. But to the audience on the opposite side of the bubble, it would be obvious that he had walked away along the vista down which they are peering."
As if to provide an example, a figure suddenly materialized on their side of the bubble. The wolflike dogs bared their fangs. For an instant, there was only an eerie, distorted, rapidly growing silhouette, changing from blood-red to black as the boundary of the bubble cross-sectioned the intruding figure. Then they recognized the back of another long-haired warrior and realized that the audience on the other side of the bubble had probably seen him approaching for some time.
He bowed to the hooded figure and handed him a small bag.
"More atavistic cubs, big and little! Hold still, Cynthia," a new voice cut in.
Hal turned and saw that two cold-eyed girls had been ushered into the cubicle. One was wiping her close-cropped hair with one hand while mopping a green stain from her friend's back with the other.
Hal nudged Joggy and whispered: "Butch!"
But Joggy was still hypnotized by the Time Bubble.
"Then how is it, Hal," he asked, "that light comes out of the bubble, if the people don't? What I mean is, if one of the people walks toward us, he shrinks to a red blot and disappears. Why doesn't the light coming our way disappear, too?"
"Well—you see, Joggy, it isn't real light. It's—"
Once more the interpreter helped him out.
"The light that comes from the bubble is an isotope. Like atoms of one element, photons of a single frequency also have isotopes. It's more than a matter of polarization. One of these isotopes of light tends to leak futureward through holes in space-time. Most of the light goes down the vistas visible to the other side of the audience. But one isotope is diverted through the walls of the bubble into the Time Theater. Perhaps, because of the intense darkness of the theater, you haven't realized how dimly lit the scene is. That's because we're getting only a single isotope of the original light. Incidentally, no isotopes have been discovered that leak pastward, though attempts are being made to synthesize them."
"Oh, explanations!" murmured one of the newly arrived girls. "The cubs are always angling for them. Apple-polishers!"
" I like this show," a familiar voice announced serenely. "They cut anybody yet with those choppers?"
Hal looked down beside him. "Butch! How did you manage to get in?"
"I don't see any blood. Where's the bodies?"
"But how did you get in—Butcher?"
The Butcher replied airily: "A red-headed man talked to me and said it certainly was sad for a future dictator not to be able to enjoy scenes of carnage in his youth, so I told him I'd been inside the Time Theater and just come out to get a drink of water and go to the eliminator, but then my sprained ankle had got worse—I kind of tried to get up and fell down again—so he picked me up and carried me right through the usher."
"Butcher, that wasn't honest," Hal said a little worriedly. "You tricked him into thinking you were older and his brain waves blanketed yours, going through the usher. I really have heard it's dangerous for you under-fives to be in here."
"The way those cubs beg for babying and get it!" one of the girls commented. "Talk about sex favoritism!" She and her companion withdrew to the far end of the cubicle.
The Butcher grinned at them briefly and concentrated his attention on the scene in the Time Bubble.
"Those big dogs—" he began suddenly. "Brute must have smelled 'em."
"Don't be silly," Hal said. "Smells can't come out of the Time Bubble. Smells haven't any isotopes and—"
"I don't care," the Butcher asserted. "I bet somebody'll figure out someday how to use the bubble for time traveling."
"You can't travel in a point of view," Hal contradicted, "and that's all the bubble is. Besides, some scientists think the bubble isn't real at all, but a—uh—"
"I believe," the interpreter cut in smoothly, "that you're thinking of the theory that the Time Bubble operates by hypermemory. Some scientists would have us believe that all memory is time traveling and that the basic location of the bubble is not space-time at all, but ever-present eternity. Some of them go so far as to state that it is only a mental inability that prevents the Time Bubble from being used for time traveling—just as it may be a similar disability that keeps a robot with the same or even more scopeful memories from being a real man or animal.
"It is because of this minority theory that under-age individuals and other beings with impulsive mentalities are barred from the Time Theater. But do not be alarmed. Even if the minority theory should prove true—and no evidence for it has ever appeared—there are automatically operating safeguards to protect the audience from any harmful consequences of time traveling (almost certainly impossible, remember) in either direction."
"Sissies!" was the Butcher's comment.
"You're rather young to be here, aren't you?" the interpreter inquired.
The Butcher folded his arms and scowled.
The interpreter hesitated almost humanly, probably snatching through a quarter-million microtapes. "Well, you wouldn't have got in unless a qualified adult had certified you as plus-age. Enjoy yourself."
There was no need for the last injunction. The scene within the bubble had acquired a gripping interest. The shaggy warriors were taking up their swords, gathering about the hooded sorcerer. The hood fell back, revealing a face with hawklike, disturbing eyes that seemed to be looking straight out of the bubble at the future.
"This is getting good," the Butcher said, squirming toward the edge of his seat.
"Stop being an impulsive mentality," Hal warned him a little nervously.
"Hah!"
The sorcerer emptied the small bag on the fire and a thick cloud of smoke puffed toward the ceiling of the bubble. A clawlike hand waved wildly. The sorcerer appeared to be expostulating, commanding. The warriors stared uncomprehendingly, which seemed to exasperate the sorcerer.
"That's right," the Butcher approved loudly. "Sock it to 'em!"
"Butcher!" Hal admonished.
Suddenly the bubble grew very bright, as if the Sun had just shone forth in the ancient world, though the rain still dripped down.
"A viewing anomaly has occurred," the interpreter announced. "It may be necessary to collapse the Time Bubble for a short period."
In a frenzy, his ragged robes twisting like smoke, the sorcerer rushed at one of the warriors, pushing him backward so that in a moment he must cross-section.
"Attaboy!" the Butcher encouraged.
Then the warrior was standing outside the bubble, blinking toward the shadows, rain dripping from his beard and furs.
"Oh, boy !" the Butcher cheered in ecstasy.
"Butcher, you've done it!" Hal said, aghast.
"I sure did," the Butcher agreed blandly, "but that old guy in the bubble helped me. Must take two to work it."
"Keep your seats!" the interpreter said loudly. "We are energizing the safeguards!"
The warriors inside the bubble stared in stupid astonishment after the one who had disappeared from their view. The sorcerer leaped about, pushing them in his direction.
Abrupt light flooded the Time Theater. The warriors who had emerged from the bubble stiffened themselves, baring their teeth.
"The safeguards are now energized," the interpreter said.
A woman in a short golden tunic stood up uncertainly from the front row of the audience.
The first warrior looked her up and down, took one hesitant step forward, then another, then suddenly grabbed her and flung her over his left shoulder, looking around menacingly and swinging his sword in his right hand.
"I repeat, the safeguards have been fully energized! Keep your seats!" the interpreter enjoined.
In the cubicle, Hal and Joggy gasped, the two girls squeaked, but the Butcher yelled a "Hey!" of disapproval, snatched up something from the floor and darted out through the sphincter.
Here and there in the audience, other adults stood up. The emerged warriors formed a ring of swinging swords and questing eyes. Between their legs their wolfish dogs, emerged with them, crouched and snarled. Then the warriors began to fan out.
"There has been an unavoidable delay in energizing the safeguards," the interpreter said. "Please be patient."
At that moment, the Butcher entered the main auditorium, brandishing a levitator above his head and striding purposefully down the aisle. At his heels, five stocky forms trotted. In a definitely pre-civilization voice, or at least with pre-civilization volume, he bellowed: "Hey, you! You quit that!"
The first warrior looked toward him, gave his left shoulder a shake to quiet his wriggling captive, gave his right shoulder one to supple his sword arm, and waited until the dwarfish challenger came into range. Then his sword swished down in a flashing arc.
Next moment, the Butcher was on his knees and the warrior was staring at him open-mouthed. The sword had rebounded from something invisible an arm's length above the gnomelike creature's head. The warrior backed a step.
The Butcher stayed down, crouching half behind an aisle seat and digging for something in his pocket. But he didn't stay quiet. "Sic
'em, Brute!" he shrilled. "Sic 'em, Darter! Sic 'em, Pinkie and Whitie and Blue!" Then he stopped shouting and raised his hand to his mouth.
Growling quite unmechanically, the five uninjes hurled themselves forward and closed with the warrior's wolflike dogs. At the first encounter, Brute and Pinkie were grabbed by the throats, shaken, and tossed a dozen feet. The warriors snarled approval and advanced. But then Brute and Pinkie raced back eagerly to the fight—and suddenly the face of the leading warrior was drenched with scarlet. He blinked and touched his fingers to it, then looked at his hand in horror.
The Butcher spared a second to repeat his command to the uninjes. But already the battle was going against the larger dogs. The latter had the advantage of weight and could toss the smaller dogs like so many foxes. But their terrible fangs did no damage, and whenever an uninj clamped on a throat, that throat was torn out.
Meanwhile, great bloody stains had appeared on the bodies of all the warriors. They drew back in a knot, looking at each other fearfully. That was when the Butcher got to his feet and strode forward, hand clenching the levitator above his head.
"Get back where you belong, you big jerks! And drop that lady!"
The first warrior pointed toward him and hissed something. Immediately, a half dozen swords were smiting at the Butcher.
"We are working to energize the safeguards," the interpreter said in mechanical panic. "Remain patient and in your seats."
The uninjes leaped into the melee, at first tearing more fur than flesh. Swords caught them and sent them spinning through the air. They came yapping back for more. Brute fixed on the first warrior's ankle. He dropped the woman, stamped unavailingly on the uninj, and let out a screech.
Swords were still rebounding from the invisible shield under which the Butcher crouched, making terrible faces at his attackers. They drew back, looked again at their bloodstains, goggled at the demon dogs. At their leader's screech, they broke and plunged back into the Time Bubble, their leader stumbling limpingly after them. There they wasted no time on their own ragged sorcerer. Their swords rose and fell, and no repulsor field stayed them.
"Brute, come back!" the Butcher yelled.
The gray uninj let go his hold on the leader's ankle and scampered out of the Time Bubble, which swiftly dimmed to its original light intensity and then winked out.
For once in their very mature lives, all of the adults in the auditorium began to jabber at each other simultaneously.
"We are sorry, but the anomaly has made it necessary to collapse the Time Bubble," the interpreter said. "There will be no viewing until further announcement. Thank you for your patience."
Hal and Joggy caught up with the Butcher just as Brute jumped into his arms and the woman in gold picked him up and hugged him fiercely. The Butcher started to pull away, then grudgingly submitted.
"Cubs!" came a small cold voice from behind Hal and Joggy. "Always playing hero! Say, what's that awful smell, Cynthia? It must have come from those dirty past men."
Hal and Joggy were shouting at the Butcher, but he wasn't listening to them or to the older voices clamoring about "revised theories of reality" and other important things. He didn't even squirm as Brute licked his cheek and the woman in gold planted a big kiss practically on his mouth.
He smiled dreamily and stroked Brute's muzzle and murmured softly: "We came, we saw, we conquered, didn't we, Brute?"
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Why are so many Earthmen desolate?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Saboteur of Space by Robert Abernathy.
Relevant chunks:
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
Question:
Why are so many Earthmen desolate?
Answer:
|
[
"The Earthmen are desolate because their ability to support themselves has been taken away by the people in power. Like many others, Ryd was a helio engineer, and he made a good living in the North American city of Dynamopolis. However, about a decade ago, all of the buildings were shuttered, and the Port of Ten Thousand Ships, Pi Mesa, was essentially closed. The people who live in Dynamopolis were actually luckier than other Terrestrials because theirs was the final port to close. \nThe people in charge discovered that Mars has a thinner atmosphere, and they decided to move all of the work to the red planet. However, they did not transport the Terrestrials to a new land and give them an opportunity to continue working. Instead, they created robots who could easily do the humans’ jobs for a lot less money. \nElectricity is hard to come by on Dynamopolis, and the energy that is left goes to Pi Mesa. Although people like the local bartender, Burshis, believe the people in power when they say that energy will soon be restored when the power cylinder is brought to Earth, others, like Mury and Ryd, are much more skeptical. They see the writing on the wall: the Terrestrials will continue to be used and abused, and all of the much-needed resources will go towards Mars, the new frontier. \n",
"Many Earthmen are desolate because the economy is so bad. Many of them lost their jobs up to a decade ago and have not been able to find work since then. Many businesses are shut down since they don’t have the power to operate. Many of the men in the bar must be homeless as Ryd thinks to himself that Burshis’ bar is one of the few open places, and approximately half of the men inside are asleep on the tables or on the floor to get out of the cold so they don’t freeze to death. The loss of power occurred because helio-dynamic engines worked so much better in the Martian atmosphere and because robot labor made Mars fully independent economically. Furthermore, the government issued the Restriction Act to keep Earthmen on Earth and prevent them from moving to Mars or elsewhere to seek employment. The men in charge of Earth’s governments have also made a deal with Mars for the power cell to restore power to Earth, but in exchange, Earth will be a Martian colony, making Earthmen slaves to Martians for all practical purposes.",
"They do not have jobs and the planet appears to be totally reliant on the aid being provided by Mars. Since the planet Earth was sold to Mars, they have become a colony to Mars. Some people on Earth (represented by Mury) are of the opinion that Earth’s government is not acting in a way that benefits their lives, thus leaving them in desolation because the current relationship between the planets allows Mars to pay people from Earth extremely low wages.\n",
"Although it was originally the largest power center, lack of resources, funding, and jobs have led Dynamopolis down a dark path. Many people were laid off as the power plants shut down, including the 809 shutdown of the Power Company of North America. \nThe space station, landing pad, and runway hovers above Dynamopolis. Pi Mesa is the only working spaceport in Dynamopolis. \nThe lack of power and the Restriction Act forced everything to stop. Earthmen weren’t allowed to go to Mars, even though they had full economic independence and the space to support them. So, now Dynamopolis is making a deal with Mars: power for labor. After losing all their jobs (a power center with no power), it was no wonder that the earthmen wound up in the situation that they did. \n"
] |
62997
|
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Saboteur of Space by Robert Abernathy.
Relevant chunks:
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story takes place in Dynamopolis, a city in North America, in the year 819. The city is flooded with searchlights, although there is very little power to go around. The Terrestrials must gather at the local bar, Stumble Inn, if they do not want to freeze to death. At one point, Dynamopolis was a wealthy city, known as the Port of Ten Thousand Ships. About ten years ago, the Power Company of North America and the Triplanet Freighting Company were shut down, and the majority of the Terrestrials lost their jobs. The only people with political power are the Poligerents, and unless a Terrestrial knows one of them, he or she is likely left without a way to make ends meet. The Terrestrials were recently told that the power will be restored once the power shell is put on Earth. The air is thin, but the Terrestrials have become accustomed to it.\n\nPi Mesa is the spaceport that hovers over the city. There are still unused ships hovering there from the days where it was an important port with lots of action. Just outside of Pi Mesa there are hundreds of low buildings that are abandoned because they are no longer useful. They contain fuel pumps and servicing equipment, and they serve as a constant reminder of the life the Terrestrials once lived. \n\nWhen Ryd and Mury break into the land patrolled by the guards in blue in the spaceport, they find narrow passages, spiral staircases, and cool metal walls covered in dust. The Communications Tower is nearby, and it is guarded by signal-men. The soldier robots that are on patrol are about as tall as the average Terrestrial, and they are scarlet colored. They are unarmed and are mostly there to scare intruders away. \n\nMury and Ryd aim to get on a ship called Shahrazad, which rests on the Number Two Runway, waiting for takeoff. When they enter the ship, they find that the cabin is very hot and full of dials and needles. There is a curved control panel in front, and the ship makes a humming sound because of all of the air-purifiers onboard. \n\nMars is an important setting in the story, although the characters do not actually travel there. Mars is almost airless, so it is very easy to run a helio-dynamic engine. On Mars, they use robots for labor, and due to a law that has been passed, Terrestrials are forced to stay on Earth. \n",
"The story is set in the city of Dynamopolis on Earth in the historic year 819. Dynamopolis was built to be the power center of North America. Earth is in a deep recession with many men out of work for almost a decade because Earth can no longer produce power for the whole planet. Ryd Randl sees a spaceship landing at the unused airstrip just as he enters Burshis’ Stumble Inn. This bar is one of the few businesses with power and is filled with men trying to keep from freezing to death outside because it is freezing at an elevation of 14,000 feet. The bar owner expresses optimism for Earth’s economy with the power cylinder from Mars allowing Earth to turn the power back on for many people. The people on Earth have endured years of unemployment and have lost hope after so many years. ",
"In the future, Earth is a desolate planet reliant on aid from Mars to continue existing. The atmosphere seems to be controlled by technology, as there is reference to a “man-made dawn” rising over the desert. \n\nThe main settings of the story are:\n\nA dark, smoky bar at the Stumble Inn owned by Burshis, located in the city of Dynamopolis which was once the power center of North America.\n\nPi Mesa, a busy spaceport in the desert on Earth that has many runways and a Control Tower. It serves as a place for supply ships to land with aid from Mars. \n\nAboard the martian space towship called Shahrazad that blasts off from Pi Mesa and enters outer space. It has a small crew and is suggested to be a small ship used for towing other cargo.\n\n",
"Saboteur of Space by Robert Abernathy takes place in Dynamopolis in the year 819. Dynamopolis was built to act as the largest power center in North America. But the real question was where they would put it. Humanity had already conquered and filled much of Earth’s territory. So, they built Dynamopolis in the sky, specifically at an altitude of 14,000 feet. \nAround the early 800s, Dynamopolis took a turn for the worse. Despite being the largest power center in North America, Dynamopolis lost its power. Businesses, companies, and factories started shutting down and resources dwindled. Dynamopolis is now desolate and freezing, due to the high altitude and lack of power. The street lamps don’t work and only a few businesses--including Burshis’ Stumble Inn--are allowed to keep the lights and heat on.\n"
] |
62997
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Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
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Describe the character of Ryd.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Saboteur of Space by Robert Abernathy.
Relevant chunks:
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
Question:
Describe the character of Ryd.
Answer:
|
[
"Ryd is a resentful and skeptical person because he has been without a job for at least ten years. His only solace comes from drinking at Burshis’ Stumble Inn, where he can pretend that no one knows him and have a nice chat with the bar owner. \n\nHe knows he was a good helio engineer, and he is fully aware that he did not deserve to have his job ripped from his hands. When the bartender suggests that he will have a new job soon, Ryd thinks to himself that anyone who wants to give him a job can screw off. He has been without one for too long to even know how to manage it. \n\nRyd is also skeptical of people around him. When Mury approaches him at the bar, he notices right away that Mury seems out of place in the way that he’s dressed. He also gives Mury an attitude when the man starts a conversation with him. He has learned not to trust many people, so he acts contrary to his natural intuition when he listens to Mury and almost immediately believes he has his best interest in mind.\n\nRyd is not a trained spy or someone who has a lot of experience with committing crimes, so he is very out of place on his mission with Mury. He is jumpy, anxious, and concerned for his safety throughout the job. He is so uncomfortable holding a weapon that he actually drops his flame pistol in a control room and nearly starts a fire. He leaves the dirty work to Mury, and he does not offer to shoot anyone or engage in combat or do anything that isn’t directly asked of him. Ryd goes along for the ride because he is afraid that Mury will kill him if he backs out of the mission, and he also realizes that Mury’s plan may be the only thing that saves men like him from becoming slaves. \n",
"Ryd is a man who lost his job a decade ago and still feels badly about it since he hasn’t been able to find a job since then. He is somewhat angry about losing his job because it wasn’t lost through any wrongdoing on his part but because he was a helio operator, and helios worked much better on Mars. He has a reputation now for asking people for loans, so when they see him, no one wants to look him in the eye for fear that he will ask for yet more money. When the owner of Burshis points out that the power cylinder from Mars will bring back jobs, Ryd acknowledges to himself that there won’t be any jobs for him; he is out of the habit of working now. Ryd has a mostly fearful outlook on life now. When Mury wants to speak with him outside the bar, Ryd is suspicious and worries that Mury might be a police officer. Ryd also feels that no one is sympathetic with him; when he did try to get another job, he was turned down because he wasn’t allied with the Poligerents. After Ryd mentions the power cylinder as the salvation of Earth, Mury lets him know that this view is based on lies because the deal is based on Earth becoming a colony of Mars. When Ryd is reluctant to help Mury, the mention of money helps sway him to help as does the thought that they will kill him now that he knows so much if he doesn’t help. At the same time, Ryd wants to help Mury to win his approval. Ryd goes along with Mury’s plans, not because he believes in the cause but because he is afraid. Ryd remains fearful and uncertain in each part of the plan as they carry it out, and he relies on Mury’s calm, cool demeanor and assurances to keep from falling apart.\n",
"Ryd Randl was a helio operator, who lost his job some time ago. He is struggling like many other people on Earth because of the black out power outages and inability to find work. His eagerness to get new work causes him to take risks, and get involved with Mury’s revolutionary plan. Ryd comes across as a law-abiding Earth citizen who is deeply uncomfortable with the crimes Mury ropes him into, but goes along with them in order to be paid.\n\n",
"Ryd is an Earthman who has been out of work for the past decade. His struggles with finding another job, making enough money to get by, and general hardships have made him somewhat bitter and static. Ryd is first introduced on cold Dynamopolis when he’s entering a pub, knowing he can’t pay for anything. He’s lucky to get his first free drink of the month, and he savors his alcohol. \nAlthough Ryd looked for a new job at first, he soon grew to resent the institution and men that had forced him out of his position. He was a helio operator, and a damn good one according to him, and enjoyed his job. Now, after being out of work for 10 years, he’d rather stick it to the man than beg for a new position. \nThroughout his adventure with Mury, Ryd falters on the occasion. He is not cowardly, but he is certainly not as experienced or as dangerous as Mury. However, since Ryd has nothing to lose--truly, no house, no job, no family--he can do whatever Mury asks him to, though he will pester him with questions along the way. \n"
] |
62997
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Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Saboteur of Space by Robert Abernathy.
Relevant chunks:
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"It’s the year 819, and a man named Ryd Randl who lives in Dynamopolis, a city in North America, goes to a dive bar. The place is crowded with many men because Dynamopolis is experiencing a power shortage, and they would freeze outside. Burshis, the owner of the bar, gives Ryd a free drink and explains that a ship from Mars just brought power back. He is expecting there to be a big boom in the economy soon, which will lead to jobs for people like Ryd. Ryd is not easily convinced of this good news. \nThe ugly and tall man sitting next to Ryd recognizes him. Once outside, Mury introduces himself and asks Ryd if he wants to make some money. He explains that he can offer Ryd a comeback. Ryd has been jobless for ten years, but before that he was a helio operator. Since then, Mars has become fully independent, and all the work moved there. Mury says that he is working for the hundreds of men who have been put out by the corrupt government on Mars. Although Ryd and all the other Earthmen have been told that the new power cylinder being installed will create jobs and bring back the power, Mury argues that isn’t truly the case. He insists that Earthmen are essentially slaves to Mars’s landowners, and in order to stop that from happening, they must stop the power cylinder from landing on Earth. \nThe two men arrive at Pi Mesa, and Mury kills a guard. Ryd steals his clothing and his flame pistol so that they can get on the ship unnoticed. Ryd must pretend to be a guard escorting Mury, the Poligerent of Dynamopolis aboard the Shahrazad. The two men sneak into the controlled area through a metal door, make it to the Communications Tower, and speak with a guard. Mury offers to show his credentials as Poligerent, and surprises the guard with a punch to the gut. Mury takes the officer’s gun, points it at him, and demands he accompany them. \n\nRyd nervously points his flame pistol at the guard and drops his weapon. The weapon goes off and its flame hits some machinery. This gives the pilot pause, and Mury hurries to the control room and takes over the situation. There are three workers there who become his hostages. He explains to the men that he’s taking Shahrazad into space to meet the power shell. \n\nWhen the ship takes off, Ryd passes out from the pressure of the acceleration. When he wakes, Mury assures him that they are on the right path, somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. However, Mury quickly finds out that his masterful plan has been foiled when one of his prisoners, the astrogator, informs him that a ship named the Alboroak is approaching, and it’s about to intercept them. \n",
"The story begins with the landing of a Martian ship on Earth, where electrical power has reached a critical shortage. The Martian ship reportedly carries a power cylinder that will restore power on Earth, enabling businesses to reopen and people to regain their jobs. Ryd Randl sees the ship landing just before he enters the Burshis’ Stumble Inn which has power and where many men are staying to keep from freezing to death outside. Ryd lost his job ten years ago, and apparently, he has asked for loans from many people in the bar because they will not look him in the eye. The bar owner gives him a free drink but refuses to offer him a loan if Ryd asks him for one. A stranger approaches Ryd and seems to know, although Ryd does not know the stranger. The stranger asks Ryd to step outside with him and offers Ryd a way to make money. The stranger’s name is Mury, and he is a Poligerent. Mury claims to be working for all the Earthmen who lost their jobs when the government made a deal with Mars. The Martians have sent a power cylinder to Earth that is supposed to restore power to Earth; however, Mury explains that the people who rule Earth’s nations have sold the planet in exchange for the device because Earth will become a colony of Mars. He claims that the Martians view Earth as a ready labor pool of slaves. Mury wants Ryd to help him prevent the power shell from reaching Earth. Ryd doesn’t want to agree to help but knows that if he doesn’t, Mury will kill him.\n\tMury and Ryd go to the airstrip where the Martian ship and its township have landed. Mury kills a guard and orders Ryd to don the uniform; he plans for Ryd to act as his escort to the towship so that he can go aboard. In their guises, Ryd and Mury make their way to the township unaccosted until one guard becomes suspicious and confronts them. When Mury offers to show him his credentials, Mury hits him in the stomach and brings him aboard the towship. The pilots and an astrogator are in the cockpit when Mury enters and sends the pilots out. The ship takes off, and when it nears the orbit of the Moon, Ryd comes to and asks where they are. Mury and the astrogator notice a bright light on the radar screen which indicates a ship. The astrogator claims it is a ship on a diplomatic mission for Mars, but Mury claims it is a warship because of its speed. He says the ship is looking for them and will intercept them in twenty minutes.\n",
"Some time in the future, Earth has sold the planet to Mars and become a colony of the Red Planet. This causes unrest for laborers who feel Mars is allowing Earth to degrade so that they can export human labor to Mars at very low cost. In the city of Dynamopolis, their main industry is distributing power, which once made them the power center of North America. \n\nThere is a spaceport, Pi Mesa, that receives essential supplies for Earth to continue existing, such as the power cylinder send from Mars as aid to Earth that is rumored to have landed there. The power shell means an end to an electrical blackout the people of Earth are currently suffering from and the creation of jobs for the people of Dynamopolis.\n\nA scary figure named Mury meets Ryd Randl, a helio operator currently out of work, at the Stumble Inn bar in Dynamopolis. Mury forces Ryd into a grand plan to board a Martian spaceship on Pi Mesa to intercept a power shell in outer space and stop it from being delivered to Earth. Mury wishes to start a sort of revolution on Earth for it to become independent from Mars again, and describes that there is an “inescapable conflict” coming between Earth and Mars.\n\nMury and Ryd invade the Pi Mesa spaceport by killing a guard, and taking his clothes to disguise Ryd as a guard escorting Mury. This disguise works for a time until one of the Martian guards senses something is wrong and tries to stop them. They narrowly make it aboard a towship called Shahrazad which they believe is going into space to retrieve a power shell to bring down to Earth. They force the captain and crew into an airlock, except for the astronavigator named Arliess, who Mury forces to continue working by holding their planned course. \n\nWhen they blast off into outer space, Mury spots a Martian warship which may confirm his suspicion that Mars was about to begin a war with Earth. This is where the story ends.\n\n",
"Set in the 800s 14,000 feet in the sky, Ryd Randl gets his first free drink of the month. He walks into Burshis’ Stumble Inn where the bartender, Burshis, hands him a drink. There’s buzz about the arrival of power from Mars. Dynamopolis has been desolate for at least a decade. This center lacked power and many lost their jobs over it. So, this new deal struck with Mars is giving people hope again. Randl laughs it off, however. He was laid off 10 years ago and gave up on finding another job. \nThe beak-nosed, scary man next to him drags Randl outside, after paying for his drink and offering him money. He introduces himself as Mury and proposes a deal. A revolutionary, Mury wants to stop the shipment to protect Earthmen from becoming Martian slaves. He needs Randl’s help, and he’ll pay 50,000 credits. Ryd agrees, and they make the trek to Pi Mesa. Mury kills a guard on the way up, and Ryd changes into his clothes, flame pistol included. Now Mury will pretend to be a Poligerent of Dynamopolis so they can board the Shahrazad. \nThey break into the spaceport successfully and continue on. Their disguises work for the most part, though Ryd’s nervous behavior makes them suspicious. Making their way down the runways, they finally arrive at the Communications Tower. On the tarmac lay Shahrazad, but guards both human and robot were everywhere. They made it onto the airlock before another guard took notice. He rushes after them and asks them who they are. Mury turns and tells him his credentials, then offers to show him ID. He then punches him and disarms him. The guard comes onboard as their captive. At first, the switches don’t work, but Mury calms Ryd down. When the central control panel is cut, then the ship will take off. \nRyd is supposed to be covering the guard when he slips and drops his weapon. The guard picks it up but is soon defeated. Mury forces the young pilot, Yet Arliess, to take off, while he sends the other two men to the airlock. The pilot does as he says, and all is well until Mury notices something on the map. There’s a bright light, one that wasn’t there before. A warship was coming for them, and although Arliess tried to lie, Mury saw straight through it. \n"
] |
62997
|
Saboteur of Space
By ROBERT ABERNATHY
Fresh power was coming to Earth, energy which would bring life to a dying planet. Only two men stood in its way, one a cowardly rat, the other a murderous martyr; both pawns in a cosmic game where death moved his chessmen of fate—and even the winner would lose.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Ryd Randl stood, slouching a little, in the darkened footway, and watched the sky over Dynamopolis come alive with searchlights. The shuttered glow of Burshis' Stumble Inn was only a few yards off to his right, but even that lodestone failed before the novel interest of a ship about to ground in the one-time Port of Ten Thousand Ships.
Now he made out the flicker of the braking drive a mile or so overhead, and presently soft motor thunder came down to blanket the almost lightless city with sound. A beam swayed through the throbbing darkness, caught the descending ship and held it, a small gleaming minnow slipping through the dark heavens. A faint glow rose from Pi Mesa, where the spaceport lay above the city, as a runway lighted up—draining the last reserves of the city's stored power, but draining them gladly now that, in those autumn days of the historic year 819, relief was in sight.
Ryd shrugged limply; the play was meaningless to him. He turned to shuffle down the inviting ramp into the glowing interior of Burshis' dive.
The place was crowded with men and smoke. Perhaps half the former were asleep, on tables or on the floor; but for the few places like Burshis' which were still open under the power shortage, many would have frozen, these days, in the chilly nights at fourteen thousand feet. For Dynamopolis sprawled atop the world, now as in the old days when it had been built to be the power center of North America.
The rocket blasts crescendoed and died up on Pi Mesa as Ryd wedged himself with difficulty into the group along the bar. If anyone recognized him, they showed it only by looking fixedly at something else. Only Burshis Yuns kept his static smile and nodded with surprising friendliness at Ryd's pinched, old-young face.
Ryd was startled by the nod. Burshis finished serving another customer and maneuvered down the stained chrome-and-synthyl bar. Ryd was heartened.
"Say, Burshis," he started nervously, as the bulky man halted with his back to him. But Burshis turned, still smiling, shaking his head so that his jowls quivered.
"No loans," he said flatly. "But just one on the house, Ryd."
The drink almost spilled itself in Ryd's hand. Clutching it convulsively, he made his eyes narrow and said suspiciously, "What you setting 'em up for, Burshis? It's the first time since—"
Burshis' smile stayed put. He said affably, "Didn't you hear that ship that just came down on the Mesa? That was the ship from Mars—the escort they were sending with the power cylinder. The power's coming in again." He turned to greet a coin-tapping newcomer, added over his shoulder: "You know what that means, Ryd. Some life around here again. Jobs for all the bums in this town—even for you."
He left Ryd frowning, thinking fuzzily. A warming gulp seemed to clear his head. Jobs. So they thought they could put that over on him again, huh? Well, he'd show them. He was smart; he was a damn good helio man—no, that had been ten years ago. But now he was out of the habit of working, anyway. No job for Ryd Randl. They gave him one once and then took it away. He drank still more deeply.
The man on Ryd's immediate right leaned toward him. He laid a hand on his arm, gripping it hard, and said quietly: "So you're Ryd Randl."
Ryd had a bad moment before he saw that the face wasn't that of any plain-clothes man he knew. For that matter, it didn't belong to anybody he had ever known—an odd, big-boned face, strikingly ugly, with a beak-nose that was yet not too large for the hard jaw or too bleak for the thin mouth below it. An expensive transparent hat slanted over the face, and from its iridescent shadows gleamed eyes that were alert and almost frighteningly black. Ryd noted that the man wore a dark-gray cellotex of a sort rarely seen in joints like Burshis'.
"Suppose we step outside, Ryd. I'd like to talk to you."
"What's the idea?" demanded Ryd, his small store of natural courage floated to the top by alcohol.
The other seemed to realize that he was getting ahead of himself. He leaned back slightly, drew a deep breath, and said slowly and distinctly. "Would you care to make some money, my friend?"
" Huh? Why, yeh—I guess so—"
"Then come with me." The hand still on his arm was insistent. In his daze, Ryd let himself be drawn away from the bar into the sluggish crowd; then he suddenly remembered his unfinished drink, and made frantic gestures. Deliberately misunderstanding, the tall stranger fumbled briefly, tossed a coin on the counter-top, and hustled Ryd out, past the blue-and-gold-lit meloderge that was softly pouring out its endlessly changing music, through the swinging doors into the dark.
Outside, between lightless buildings, the still cold closed in on them. They kept walking—so fast that Ryd began to lose his breath, long-accustomed though his lungs were to the high, thin air.
"So you're Ryd Randl," repeated the stranger after a moment's silence.
"I might have known you. But I'd almost given up finding you tonight."
Ryd tried feebly to wrench free, stumbled. "Look," he gasped. "If you're a cop, say so!"
The other laughed shortly. "No. I'm just a man about to offer you a chance. For a come-back, Ryd—a chance to live again.... My name—you can call me Mury."
Ryd was voiceless. Something seemed increasingly ominous about the tall, spare man at his side. He wished himself back in Burshis' with his first free drink in a month. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes.
"How long have you been out of a job, Ryd?"
"Nine ... ten years. Say, what's it to you?"
"And why, Ryd?"
"Why...? Look, mister, I was a helio operator." He hunched his narrow shoulders and spread his hands in an habitual gesture of defeat. "Damn good one, too—I was a foreman ten years ago. But I don't have the physique for Mars—I might just have made it then , but I thought the plant was going to open again and—"
And that was it. The almost airless Martian sky, with its burning actinic rays, is so favorable for the use of the helio-dynamic engine. And after the middle of the eighth century, robot labor gave Mars its full economic independence—and domination. For power is—power; and there is the Restriction Act to keep men on Earth even if more than two in ten could live healthily on the outer world.
"Ten years ago," Mury nodded as if satisfied. "That must have been the Power Company of North America—the main plant by Dynamopolis itself, that shut down in December, 809. They were the last to close down outside the military bases in the Kun Lun."
Ryd was pacing beside him now. He felt a queer upsurge of confidence in this strange man; for too long he had met no sympathy and all too few men who talked his language. He burst out: "They wouldn't take me, damn them! Said my record wasn't good enough for them. That is, I didn't have a drag with any of the Poligerents."
"I know all about your record," said Mury softly.
Ryd's suspicions came back abruptly, and he reverted to his old kicked-dog manner. "How do you know? And what's it to you?"
All at once, Mury came to a stop, and swung around to face him squarely, hard eyes compelling. They were on an overpass, not far from where the vast, almost wholly deserted offices of the Triplanet Freighting Company sprawled over a square mile of city. A half-smile twisted Mury's thin lips.
"Don't misunderstand me, Ryd—you mean nothing at all to me as an individual. But you're one of a vast mass of men for whom I am working—the billions caught in the net of a corrupt government and sold as an economic prey to the ruthless masters of Mars. This, after they've borne all the hardships of a year of embargo, have offered their hands willingly to the rebuilding of decadent Earth, only to be refused by the weak leaders who can neither defy the enemy nor capitulate frankly to him."
Ryd was dazed. His mind had never been constructed to cope with such ideas and the past few years had not improved its capabilities. "Are you talking about the power cylinder?" he demanded blurrily.
Mury cast a glance toward the Milky Way as if to descry the Martian cargo projectile somewhere up among its countless lights. He said simply, "Yes."
"I don't get it," mumbled Ryd, frowning. He found words that he had heard somewhere a day or so before, in some bar or flophouse: "The power cylinder is going to be the salvation of Earth. It's a shot in the arm—no, right in the heart of Earth industry, here in Dynamopolis. It will turn the wheels and light the cities and—"
"To hell with that!" snapped Mury, suddenly savage. His hands came up slightly, the fingers flexing; then dropped back to his sides. "Don't you know you're repeating damnable lies?"
Ryd could only stare, cringing and bewildered. Mury went on with a passion shocking after his smooth calm:
"The power shell is aid, yes—but with what a price! It's the thirty pieces of silver for which the venal fools who rule our nations have sold the whole planet to Mars. Because they lack the courage and vision to retool Earth's plants and factories for the inescapable conflict, they're selling us out—making Earth, the first home of man, a colony of the Red Planet. Do you know what Earth is to the great Martian land-owners? Do you? " He paused out of breath; then finished venomously, "Earth is a great pool of labor ready to be tapped, cheaper than robots—cheap as slaves !"
"What about it?" gulped Ryd, drawing away from the fanatic. "What you want me to do about it?"
Mury took a deep breath and straightened his shoulders. His face was once more bleakly impassive; only the mouth was an ugly line. "We're going to do something about it, you and I. Tonight. Now."
Ryd was nearly sober. And wholly terrified. He got out chokingly,
"What's that mean?"
"The power shell—isn't coming in as planned."
"You can't do that."
" We can," said Mury with a heavy accent on the first word. "And there are fifty thousand credits in it for you, Ryd. Are you with us?"
Suspicion was chill reality now in Ryd's mind. And he knew one thing certainly—if he refused now to accompany Mury, he would be killed, by this man or another of his kind. For the secret power known only as We never took chances. Whispered-of, terrible, and world-embracing, desperate upshot of the times in its principles of dynamitism, war, and panclasm—that was We .
The question hung in the air for a long moment. Then Ryd, with an effort, said, "Sure." A moment later it struck him that the monosyllabic assent was suspicious; he added quickly, "I got nothing to lose, see?" It was, he realized, the cold truth.
"You won't lose," said Mury. He seemed to relax. But the menace with which he had clothed himself clung, as he turned back on the way they had come.
Ryd followed dog-like, his feet in their worn shoes moving without his volition. He was frightened. Out of his very fright came a longing to placate Mury, assure him that he, Ryd, was on the same side whatever happened....
After some steps he stole a sidelong glance at his tall companion, and whined, "Where ... where we going now?"
Mury paused in his long stride, removed a hand from a pocket of the gray topcoat that wrapped him as in somber thoughts. Wordlessly, he pointed as Ryd had known he would—toward where a pale man-made dawn seemed breaking over Pi Mesa.
II
"One blow for freedom!" said Mury with caught breath. His voice fell upon air scarcely stilled since the sodden thump of the blow that had killed the guard.
The body lay between them, face down on the graveled way in the inky moon-shadow. On one side Pi Mesa stretched away two hundred yards to drop sharply into the night; on the other was the unlighted mass of the long, continuous, low buildings that housed now unused fuel pumps and servicing equipment. Looking down at the dead huddle at his feet, a little stunned by the reality of this, Ryd knew that he was in it now. He was caught in the machinery.
Mury hefted the length of steel in his hand once more, as if testing the weight that had crushed a man's skull so easily. Then, with a short wrist-flip, he sent it flying into the dried weeds which had over-grown the aero field on the mesa's rim during the summer months after State order had grounded all fliers in America.
"All right, Ryd," he said coolly. "Trade clothes with this fellow. I've brought you this far—you're taking me the rest of the way."
The rest of the way.
Ryd was still panting, and his side was paining from the strenuous exertion of the long climb up the side of the mountain, far from the guarded highway. His fingers, numbed by the cold of the high, thin air, shook as he knelt and fumbled with the zippers of the dead guard's uniform. The belted gun, however, was heavy and oddly comforting as he clumsily buckled it about his hips. He knew enough of weapons to recognize this as, not the usual paralyzer, but a flame pistol, powerful and deadly. He let his hand linger on its butt; then strong fingers tightened on his bony wrist, and he looked up with a start into the sardonic black eyes of the Panclast.
"No use now for firearms," said Mury. "All the guns we could carry wouldn't help us if we were caught out there. That gun is just a stage property for the little play we're going to give in about three minutes—when you'll act a guardsman escorting me, a Poligerent of Dynamopolis, aboard the towship Shahrazad ."
For a moment Ryd felt relief—he had hazily imagined that Mury's hatred of Mars and all things Martian might have led him to try to sabotage the Martian warship which lay somewhere on the runways beyond the long, low buildings, and which would be closely guarded. But the towship would also be guarded ... he shivered in the cold, dry night air.
Mury had melted into the shadow a few yards away. There was a light scraping, then a green flame sputtered, briefly lighting up his hands and face, and narrowing at once to a thin, singing needle of light. He had turned a pocket electron torch against the lock-mechanism of a small, disused metal door.
Ryd watched in painful suspense. There was no sound in his ears save for the hard, dry shrilling of the ray as it bit into the steel. It seemed to be crying: run, run —but he remembered the power that knew how to punish better than the law, and stood still, shivering.
The lock gave way and the door slipped aside. A light went on inside, and Ryd's heart stopped, backfired, and started again, raggedly. The same automatic mechanism that had turned the lights on had started the air-fresher, which picked up speed with a soft whine, sweeping out the long-stale atmosphere. Mury motioned to Ryd to follow him in.
It was still musty in the narrow passage, between the closely-pressing walls, beneath the great tubes and cable sheathings that fluted the ceiling overhead. A stairway spiraled up on the right to the control cupola somewhere overhead; even in the airtight gallery a thin film of dust lay on every step. Up there were the meters and switches of the disused terminal facilities of the spaceport; beyond the metal door marked CAUTION, just beyond the stairwell, lay the long runway down which the ships of space had glided to be serviced, refueled, and launched into the sky once more by now dormant machines.
"Wait," said Mury succinctly; he vanished up the spiral stair, his long legs taking two steps at a time. After an aching minute's silence, he was back. All was clear as seen from the turret-windows overhead.
They emerged in shadow, hugging the wall. Almost a quarter of a mile to the right the megalith of the Communications Tower, crowned with many lights where the signal-men sat godlike in its summit. Its floodlights shed a vast oval of light out over the mesa, where the mile-long runways—no longer polished mirror-like as in the days of Dynamopolis' glory—stretched away into the darkness of the table land. A handful of odd ships—mere remnant of the hundreds that Pi Mesa port had berthed—huddled under the solenoid wickets, as if driven together by the chill of the thin, knife-like wind that blew across the mesa.
As the two paced slowly across the runways, Ryd had a sense of protective isolation in the vast impersonality of the spaceport. Surely, in this Titanic desolation of metal slabs and flat-roofed buildings, dominated by the one great tower, total insignificance must mean safety for them.
And indeed no guard challenged them. There were armed men watching for all intruders out on the desert beyond the runways, but once inside, Ryd's borrowed blue seemed to serve as passport enough. Nonetheless, the passport's knees were shaking when they stood at last, inconspicuous still, at the shadowed base of the Communications Tower.
Not far off, a half-dozen dignitaries, huddled close together in the midst of these Cyclopean man-made things that dwarfed their policies, their principles and ambitions, stood talking rather nervously with two officers, aristocratically gaudy in the scarlet of the Martian Fleet. Blue-clad guardsmen of Earth watched from a distance—watched boredly enough.
And out on the steel-stripped tarmac, under the solenoid of Number Two Runway, lay a towship, backed like a stegosaur with its massive magnets—the Shahrazad , panting like a dragon amid rolling clouds of steam. She was plainly ready to go into space. The bottom dropped out of Ryd's stomach before he realized that a warning at least must be sounded before the ship could lift. But that might come any moment now.
"Relax," said Mury in a low voice. "Nothing's gone wrong. We'll be aboard the Shahrazad when she lifts." For a moment his black eyes shifted, hardening, toward Runway Four. The Martian warship lay there beyond the solenoid, a spiteful hundred-foot swordfish of steel, with blind gunvalves, row on row, along its sleek sides and turret-blisters. It had not yet been tugged onto the turntable; it could not be leaving again very soon, though Earth weight was undoubtedly incommoding its crew. About it a few figures stood that were stiffly erect and immobile, as tall as tall men. From head to toe they were scarlet.
"Robots!" gasped Ryd, clutching his companion's arm convulsively.
"Martian soldier robots!"
"They're unarmed, harmless. They aren't your police with built-in weapons. Only the humans are dangerous. But we've got to move. For God's sake, take it easy."
Ryd licked dry lips. "Are we going—out into space?"
"Where else?" said Mury.
The official-looking individual in the expensive topcoat and sport hat had reached the starboard airlock of the towship before anyone thought to question his authorization, escorted as he was by a blue-uniformed guardsman. When another sentry, pacing between runways a hundred yards from the squat space vessel, paused to wonder, it was—as it came about—just a little too late.
The guard turned and swung briskly off to intercept the oddly-behaving pair, hand crowding the butt of his pistol, for he was growing uneasy. His alarm mounted rapidly, till he nearly sprained an ankle in sprinting across the last of the two intervening runways, between the solenoid wickets. Those metal arches, crowding one on the other in perspective, formed a tunnel that effectively shielded the Shahrazad's airlocks from more distant view; the gang of notables attracted by the occasion was already being shepherded back to safety by the Communications guards, whose attention was thus well taken up.
The slight man in guardsman's blue glanced over his shoulder and vanished abruptly into the circular lock. His companion wheeled on the topmost step, looking down with some irritation on his unhandsome face, but with no apparent doubt of his command of the situation.
"Yes?" he inquired frostily.
"What goes on here?" snapped the guard, frowning at the tall figure silhouetted against the glow in the airlock. "The crew's signaled all aboard and the ship lifts in two minutes. You ought to be—"
"I am Semul Mury, Poligerent for the City of Dynamopolis," interrupted the tall man with asperity. "The City is naturally interested in the delivery of the power which will revivify our industries." He paused, sighed, shifting his weight to the next lower step of the gangway. "I suppose you'll want to re-check my credentials?"
The guard was somewhat confused; a Poligerent, in ninth-century bureaucracy, was a force to be reckoned with. But he contrived to nod with an appearance of brusqueness.
Fully expecting official papers, signed and garnished with all the pompous seals of a chartered metropolis, the guard was dazed to receive instead a terrific left-handed foul to the pit of the stomach, and as he reeled dizzily, retching and clawing for his gun, to find that gun no longer holstered but in the hand of the self-styled Poligerent, pointing at its licensed owner.
"I think," Mury said quietly, flexing his left wrist with care the while his right held the gun steady, "that you'd better come aboard with us."
The guard was not more cowardly than the run of politically-appointed civic guardsmen. But a flame gun kills more frightfully than the ancient electric chair. He complied, grasping the railing with both hands as he stumbled before Mury up the gangway—for he was still very sick indeed, wholly apart from his bewilderment, which was enormous.
Above, Ryd Randl waited in the lock, flattened against the curved wall, white and jittering. The inner door was shut, an impenetrable countersunk mirror of metal.
"Cover him, Ryd," ordered Mury flatly. In obedience Ryd lugged out the heavy flame pistol and pointed it; his finger was dangerously tremulous on the firing lever. He moistened his lips to voice his fears; but Mury, pocketing the other gun, threw the three-way switch on the side panel, the switch that should have controlled the inner lock.
Nothing happened.
"Oh, God. We're caught. We're trapped!" The outer gangway had slid up, the lock wheezed shut, forming an impenetrable crypt of niosteel.
Mury smiled with supernal calm. "We won't be here long," he said. Then, to quiet Ryd's fears, he went on: "The central control panel and the three local switches inside, between, and outside the locks are on the circuit in that order. Unless the locks were closed from the switch just beyond the inner lock, that lock will open when the central control panel is cut out in preparation for lifting."
Almost as he paused and drew breath, a light sprang out over the switch he had closed and the inner lock swung silently free of its gaskets. Ryd felt a trembling relief; but Mury's voice lashed out like a whip as he slipped cat-like into the passage.
"Keep him covered. Back out of the lock."
Ryd backed—the white, tense face of the prisoner holding his own nervous gaze—and, almost out of the lock, stumbled over the metal pressure rings. And the gun was out of his unsure grip, clattering somewhere near his slithering feet, as he started to fall.
He saw the guardsman hurl himself forward; then he was flung spinning, back against the engine-room door. In a flash, even as he struggled to keep on his feet, he saw the man in the airlock coming up from a crouch, shifting the pistol in his right hand to reach its firing lever; he saw Mury sidestep swiftly and throw the master control switch outside.
The inner lock whooshed shut, barely missing Ryd. At the same instant, the flame gun lighted locks and passage with one terrific flash, and a scorched, discolored spot appeared on the beveled metal of the opposite lock a foot from Mury's right shoulder.
"You damned clumsy little fool—" said Mury with soft intensity. Then, while the air around the metal walls still buzzed and snapped with blue sparks, he whirled and went up the control-room gangway in two quick bounds. Even as he went the flame gun thundered again in the starboard airlock.
Mury was just in time, for the pilot had been about to flash "Ready" to the Communications Tower when the explosions had given him pause. But the latter and his two companions were neither ready nor armed; clamped in their seats at the controls, already marked, they were helpless in an instant before the leveled menace of the gun. And the imprisoned guardsman, having wasted most of his charges, was helpless, too, in his little cell of steel.
"It's been tried before," said one of the masked men. He had a blond, youthful thatch and a smooth healthy face below the mask, together with an astrogator's triangled stars which made him ex officio the brains of the vessel. "Stealing a ship—it can't be done any more."
"It's been done again," said Mury grimly. "And you don't know the half of it. But—you will. I'll need you. As for your friends—" The gun muzzle shifted slightly to indicate the pilot and the engineer. "Out of those clamps. You're going to ride this out in the portside airlock."
He had to repeat the command, in tones that snapped with menace, before they started with fumbling, rebellious hands to strip their armor from themselves. The burly engineer was muttering phrases of obscene fervor; the weedy young pilot was wild-eyed. The blond astrogator, sitting still masked and apparently unmoved, demanded:
"What do you think you're trying to do?"
"What do you think?" demanded Mury in return. "I'm taking the ship into space. On schedule and on course—to meet the power shell." The flame gun moved with a jerk. "And as for you—what's your name?"
"Yet Arliess."
"You want to make the trip alive, don't you, Yet Arliess?"
The young astrogator stared at him and at the gun through masking goggles; then he sank into his seat with a slow shudder. "Why, yes," he said as if in wonder, "I do."
III
Shahrazad drove steadily forward into deep space, vibrating slightly to the tremendous thrust of her powerful engines. The small, cramped cabin was stiflingly hot to the three armored men who sat before its banked dials, watching their steady needles.
Ryd had blacked out, darkness washing into his eyes and consciousness draining from his head, as the space ship had pitched out into emptiness over the end of the runway on Pi Mesa and Mury had cut in the maindrive. Pressure greater than anything he had ever felt had crushed him; his voice had been snatched from his lips by those terrible forces and lost beneath the opening thunder of the three-inch tubes. Up and up, while the acceleration climbed to seven gravities—and Ryd had lost every sensation, not to regain them until Earth was dropping away under the towship's keel.
A single gravity held them back and down in the tilted seats, and the control panels seemed to curve half above them, their banks of lights confused with the stars coldly through the great nose window. In the control room all sounds impinged on a background made up of the insect hum of air-purifiers, the almost supersonic whine of the fast-spinning gyroscopes somewhere behind them, the deep continuous growl of the engines.
Mury's voice broke through that steady murmur, coming from Ryd's right.
"You can unfasten your anticlamps, Ryd," he said dryly. "That doesn't mean you," to the young navigator, on his other hand as he sat in the pilot's seat with his pressure-clamps thrown back and his gloved hands free to caress the multiplex controls before him. Clipped to the sloping dash at his left elbow was a loaded flame gun.
Ryd emerged, with much bungling, from his padded clamps, and shook his head groggily as he ran a hand through his slightly thinning hair. He ventured shakily, "Where are we?"
Mury smiled slightly. "Only our astrogator," he indicated Arliess, still masked and fettered, "can tell you that with precision. I understand only enough of astrogational practice to make sure that he is holding to the course outlined on the log. For that matter ... he is an intelligent young man and if he were not blinded by notions of duty to an outworn system.... We are now somewhere near the orbit of the Moon. Isn't that right, Arliess?"
The other did not seem to hear; he sat staring blindly before him through his goggles at the slowly-changing chart, where cryptic lights burned, some moving like glowing paramecia along fine-traced luminous tracks.
Mury too sat silent and immobile for a minute or more. Then, abruptly, he inclined his universal chair far to the right, and his long frame seemed to tense oddly. His finger stabbed out one of the sparks of light.
"What's that, Arliess?"
The astrogator broke his silence. "A ship."
"I know that well enough. What ship?"
"I supposed you had examined the log. It would have told you that that's the liner Alborak , out of Aeropolis with a diplomatic mission for Mars."
Mury shook his head regretfully. "That won't wash, Arliess. Even if you suppose her off course, no liner aspace ever carried a tenth of that drive."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Arliess. But his voice was raw and unsteady.
"I'm talking about this. That ship is a warship, and it's looking for us—will intercept us inside of twenty minutes at the most!"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Serpent River by Don Wilcox.
Relevant chunks:
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Captain Linden and his lieutenant \"Split\" Campbell make up the first manned expedition from Earth to this particular planet, aiming to investigate a large silver river on its surface. The seemingly-endless silvery strip that traveled the planet's surface was unidentifiable as of yet. They see the river-like thing early on, but Campbell spots a humanoid through his telescope--this being is much like a human man, including the fact that he wore clothing. Captain Linden decides it's time for introductions, as if he senses he can trust this being, but they watch as a female and then many other people join the first man on the surface, seemingly coming out of an underground city. Linden and Campbell think their ship is out of sight, and watch a ritual that the man is performing to the setting sun. The crowd of people continues to increase, and Linden notices that the landscape is moving: trees are shifting in the ground. He and Campbell stay in the ship and observe the various types of clothing and the ritual itself, as well as the moving trees which seemed to be moving to attack the people. They are indeed warriors starting an attack, and started swinging weapons. Linden tells Campbell to start the siren on their ship to scare away the attackers, and the first man they'd seen, presumably the leader, starts towards the ship. Once they are close enough, it is obvious that the humanoids don't have eyebrows or eye lashes. Captain Linden hands the leader a medallion that plays a song, as a token of friendship. Tomboldo, the leader, starts a round of introductions through a lot of gesturing. Linden hopes to learn about the Serpent River through the people to understand its cultural significance, and these people start to ask about the siren noises. The warriors attack again and panic ensues, pushing the humans to use weapons this time. Gravgak, the guard who had been escorting the humans, is knocked down. As Linden tries to tend to him, Gravgak knocks him out with his club. Linden is unconscious for a few weeks, and Vauna, Tomboldo's daughter, spends a lot of time by the Captian's side. Linden reminds Campbell that they weren't allowed to marry anyone from this planet, but mostly in an effort to warn himself to be careful around Vauna. He learns that these people are called the Benzendellas. Tomboldo is baffled by the technology that the humans have, but Linden is not able to communicate his questions about the Serpent River. He sees Gravgak, who apologizes for the accidental injury, but from Vauna's reaction Linden is not sure if he is telling the truth. Gravgak insists on talking to Vauna in private, but Vauna's father calls them back. It is Tomboldo's thanks to the humans that gives a glimpse into the meaning of the Serpent River: he says the humans will ride with them on the rope of life, which they call Kao-Wagwattl.",
"The story relates the experience of two agents who travel to an unnamed planet for Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions (EGGWE). An unmanned camera has brought pictures from the planet back to Earth, showing two features of particular interest: 1) a human-like species, the Benzendella, living there, and 2) a rope-like, silvery undulating river. Captain Linden is the commander of the mission; his lieutenant is “Split” Campbell. After traveling millions of miles to reach the planet, the men land and use their telescope to check their surroundings before alighting from the spaceship. They see the river and the human-like beings who look like human ancestors from a million years ago. As they watch, the leader of the humans seems to perform a kind of ritual, but then, Linden notices some trees moving uphill and watches in horror as warriors toss the trees aside and launch an attack on the humans using clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. To avert a massacre, Linden orders Campbell to hit the siren, which startles the attackers so that they retreat. Linden and Campbell then approach the people and give the leader, Tomboldo, a musical medallion on a chain. Introductions are exchanged, and some of the humans make the siren sound, indicating they want to hear it again, but the attackers return. Linden throws a capsule bomb at them, making them fall back briefly, but they quickly resume their attack. Finally, Linden and Campbell throw fire at the attackers, wounding many of them, and they retreat. One of the Benzendella men who acts as a guard, Gravgak, is injured, and Linden and Campbell treat and wrap his wounds; when they finish, they use smelling salts to rouse him, and he jumps up swinging one of the clubs he has picked up. The rock on the end of it hits Linden, causing a head injury and knocking him unconscious. While he is recuperating, Tomboldo’s daughter Vauna takes care of him, and when Linden regains consciousness, he falls in love with her and has to remind himself of Clause D of the EGGWE Code that restricts marriage between agents and natives. Gravgak visits him to say that he did not intentionally hit Linden with the rock, but Linden doubts his sincerity. Gravgak then orders Vauna to speak with him in private, but her father stops them to announce that the council has decided they will move back to the other part of their world. They will travel on the rope river and want Linden and Campbell to go with them.\n",
"Captain Jim Linden and \"Split\" Campbell travel to a planet previously photographed by unmanned rovers as representatives of the EGGWE, the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions. Thier purpose is to study new planets and forge peaceful relationships with native inhabitants in order to establish trade partnerships. The Keynes-Roy cameras had captured images of humanoid natives as well as a massive, silvery \"rope\" that appeared to move along the planet's surfaces, so Linden and Campbell hope to identify the \"rope.\" They station at a safe distance from it, since they are unsure of its purpose, and, during their observations, they witness a group of native Benzendella emerge from their underground city for some kind of sunset ritual. As the group gathers around their leader--a muscular individual clothed in a cream-colored robe and red headdress--Jim and Split notice a group of trees drifting slowly over the sand towards the Benzendellas. They quickly realize the trees disguise a hostile group intending to ambush the natives. When they throw off their disguises and begin to charge, Split triggers one of the ship's sirens, and the attackers retreat back to the trees. Jim and Split walk to meet the group's leader, Tomboldo, and they offer a gift as a gesture of good will. Tomboldo has a guard, Gravgak, protect them as they make their way back to the city, and Gravgak tells them to mimic the ship's siren in order to keep the attackers at bay. However, the antagonists attack again, and Jim deploys one of his capsule bombs. Gravgak retrieves one of the attacker's clubs and runs towards them. Jim cannot decide if this is a bold move to protect the Benzendellas or a kind of warning about Jim's weapons, which would reveal Gravgak's loyalties might not be completely steadfast. When Gravgak is injured in the ensuing battle, Jim and Split revive him, and Gravgak impulsively grabs the club again and whacks Jim with it, leaving him in a state of unconsciousness. For a length of time, Jim remains in this comatose state, drifting in and out of consciousness as Split plays records of the Benzendella language and Tomboldo's daughter, Vauna, helps nurse him back to health. During this period, Jim realizes he has developed strong feelings for Vauna, and she seems to share these emotions. He tells Split to remind him of the EGGWE's Code of Conduct which bars adherents from marrying natives on planets they explore. When he awakens, Gravgak apologizes although Jim suspects the apology is insincere, and that he is either jealous of his relationship to Vauna or he is, in fact, a traitor to the Benzendellas. Tomboldo announces that because of the threat to their people, they will use the silvery \"rope of life\" called Kao-Wagwattl to find another spot to live on the planet and bring Jim and Split with them.",
"Captain Linden and his awkward and studious lieutenant “Split” Campbell arrive as the first human expedition on a strange planet. They are members of the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions (EGGWE) and Split followed their rules dutifully. Thanks to photographs, they are aware that this planet is inhabited by human-like creatures and that there is a large, serpent-like thing running through it. They land on the planet and peer through the telescope. Soon, a man and a woman rise up from the earth and stand on top of the flat, empty rock to watch the sunset. They are joined by more and more people, around 40 eventually. Split and Linden watch in awe as the leader, a man in robes and a headdress, performs some sort of ritual. Linden notices that the trees are moving towards them, nothing too unusual. He’d seen sponge-trees before on other planets. However, these trees were being used as a cover for an attack. A horde of naked warriors rushes out with clubs and circles the ceremony. Linden orders Split to hit #16, and a siren wails out from their spaceship. It shakes the warriors to their core, and they retreat. Split and Linden gather up their supplies and exit the ship. The leader, having noticed their ship during the wailing, makes his way towards them. With 10-minutes left on the wailing, Linden believes they should be safe, but they carry small bombs (specifically special-purpose capsule bombs) with them as well. \nAs they get closer, Split notices how human these creatures look, aside from the lack of eyebrows and eyelashes. Linden offers their leader a gift, a singing necklace in the shape of a coin that plays “Trail of Stars” when pressed. The leader introduces himself as Tomboldo, and each member follows. Gravgak is introduced, a large, muscular alien covered in green and black painted diamonds, and he is tasked with protecting Linden and Split. Tomboldo invites them underground, where they can speak safely. They agree, needing to know more about the Serpent River. \nThey start wailing, just like the siren, in the hopes that it would keep the attackers at bay. However, the sponge-trees started moving again and danger struck. Linden and Split threw their bombs at the warriors and took them down, but not quick enough. Gravgak was injured and lay on the ground. Split and Linden bandaged him, and when he woke up, he “accidentally” hit Linden over the head with his club. \nLinden is taken care of by Vauna, Tomboldo’s daughter, and her assistant, Omosla. He was very injured, even needing surgery performed by Split. Eventually, his health is restored and he’s caught feelings for Vauna, despite Section Four Clause D of the conduct of EGGWE. Vauna and Gravgak are potentially in a relationship, but Tomboldo does not approve. The Benzendella are sleep-singers and their song echoes in the night. Tomboldo invites Linden and Split to accompany his people on a journey to safety aboard the Kao-Wagwattl, or the Serpent River. "
] |
50923
|
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
|
Describe the relationship between Captain Linden and his lieutenant "Split" Campbell
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Serpent River by Don Wilcox.
Relevant chunks:
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
Question:
Describe the relationship between Captain Linden and his lieutenant "Split" Campbell
Answer:
|
[
"Linden is a fairly relaxed captain who is ready to perform his mission to code, but is almost amused at his lieutenant's inability to stray from code. He calls Campbell \"Split\" because he does everything so by-the-book that if he were combing his hair down the middle, he wouldn't be surprised if he split the hairs in the middle of his head for perfect symmetry. They seem to work well together, and Campbell is dedicated to his scientific mission and reviewing reports, while Linden reminds him to look at the window at the world around them, which offers a nice balance to their progress. Campbell clearly respects Linden a lot, and Linden is always kind to him and not rude or condescending, which is important for team cohesion on a mission away from a home planet. ",
"Captain Linden is the senior commanding officer of Lieutenant Split Campbell; however, Campbell is a much more by-the-book military man than Linden is. Linden has a sense of humor and enjoys teasing Campbell about his strict adherence to military standards and codes. He gives Campbell the nickname “Split” because of Campbell’s extreme attention to detail and teases that Campbell will split the hairs that pop up when he parts his hair. Linden wishes Campbell would lighten up a little and even orders him to relax. At the same time, Linden also knows that he can depend on Campbell to fulfill his duties. When the two agents witness the “trees” moving toward the group of humanoids and realize they are actually warriors launching an attack, Split addresses Linden first as “Captain” and then as “Jim” as he worries about the group about to be attacked. Linden notices this and realizes that Split’s formality drops when he is excited. The two men work well together, and Campbell seems to know what Linden wants from him without needing any orders. When Linden suffers a head injury after being hit by a rock, Campbell performs the surgery that relieves the pressure on his brain; he tells Linden he must get well, as if Campbell is counting on Linden both as a friend and an officer. As Linden realizes he is falling in love with Vauna, he reminds Campbell of the EGGWE Code Clause D, which prevents agents from marrying natives, and Campbell asks whether Linden is warning Campbell or himself. Campbell seems to be speaking to him as a friend by acknowledging that Linden has feelings for Vauna. At the same time, Campbell addresses Linden as “Captain,” showing that their friendship does not place them on equal standing even though they are close enough to call each other by their first names.\n\n",
"Jim gives Campbell the nickname \"Split\" because of his meticulous attention to detail and his need for order in life. Split memorizes the EGGWE code and recites relevant sections throughout the story such as when Jim asks him to recall the clause about the ban on marrying any natives whom agents might encounter during inter-planetary expeditions. After Gravgak clubs Jim, Split performs surgery on him during his state of unconsciousness in order to relieve pressure on his brain and even brings him recordings of the Benzendella language so that he can learn to speak while he gathers his strength. Split also communicates with Omosla and Tomboldo during Jim's coma-like state, so that he can learn more about the Benzendella people and share about the purpose of their own expedition. Jim’s more spontaneous, empathetic approach to leadership complements Split’s rigid commitment to rules, and this makes them a strong and effective team.",
"Captain Linden and Lieutenant “Split” Campbell have developed a very friendly relationship over the course of their two expeditions. Linden even nicknamed Lieutenant Campbell “Split” for his diligent and dutiful ways. Linden constantly teases Split and pushes him to think outside the box and outside the EGGWE’s code of conduct. They can easily rely on each other, as can be seen in battle and underground. Split throws his bombs when being attacked by the warriors, even though Linden didn’t order him to do so. Despite being a very diligent traveler, he recognizes that in times of crisis it’s better to just act. As well, when Linden was gravely injured by Gravgak, Linden performs surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain and help him heal quicker."
] |
50923
|
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
|
Who is Captain Linden and what happens to him throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Serpent River by Don Wilcox.
Relevant chunks:
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
Question:
Who is Captain Linden and what happens to him throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Captain Linden is the leader of the first manned expedition from Earth to the planet that is inhabited by the Benzendella people. His sponsorship is from the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions, \"EGGWE\" for short. Because a previous rover had discovered a mysterious silver river and some humanoid creatures, Linden and his lieutenant were sent to discover more. He hoped that interacting with the humanoids would allow him to learn some cultural significance behind what he referred to as the Serpent River, which he also planned on studying scientifically. After he landed, while Campbell was monitoring the humanoids, he noticed that trees were moving towards the people, and sensed an incoming attack. He ordered Campbell to start a siren from their ship to distract the attackers, and later led the two of them to meet the local Benzendella people. He presented their leader with a token of friendship, a medallion that played music. As another attack started, and a guard fell, Linden tried to tend to the guard but was knocked out and did not regain consciousness for a few weeks. As he slowly healed and felt more normal, he had to warn himself to be careful around Vauna, the Benzendella leader's daughter, who had been watching him at his bedside. She was very beautiful, and he knew it was against mission code to marry locals. ",
"Captain Linden is the leader of the first expedition to the planet. The trip is sponsored by the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions (EGGWE). From images brought back to Earth by a roving camera, they know that humanoids live on the planet, and there is a huge rope or serpent-like object or creature moving continuously across the surface. He and Split Campbell cautiously land a good distance from the rope-like object in case it is dangerous. Although he is in command, Linden has a good sense of humor and likes to joke with and poke fun at Split; in fact, Linden is the one who gave him his nickname. Linden allows some gray area in following the Code, for example, encouraging Campbell to look through the telescope at the rope before Campbell has finished writing his reports. After exclaiming rather unprofessionally at what he sees, Linden “orders” him to take it easy. The two men are on their first voyage together, and Linden has entertained himself on the journey of millions of miles by teasing Campbell. Linden has been to six other planets, but none of them had beings that were so similar to humans; the ones on the current planet look like the human ancestors from one million years ago, and Linden is very excited about this. Linden senses that the humanoids are friendly and trusts his intuition; this is why he decides to help them when the other group attacks them. He tries to befriend the leader by offering him a singing medallion on a chain, but what really impresses them is the way he and Campbell help them when the attackers return. After the battle, Linden is hit in the head by a rock attached to the club that Gravgak used when Gravgak jumps up after being roused to consciousness. Linden suffers a head injury and is unconscious for several days. While he is recuperating, the humanoid leader’s daughter Vauna cares for him, and he falls in love with her. Linden reminds Campbell of Clause D of the EGGWE Code, which states that none of their agents can marry a native but then admits he is reminding himself of this, not Campbell. When Gravgak states he is ready to talk to Vauna alone, Linden reaches for her hand, letting her know his feelings about her. Her father orders them to come back to the group, and when Tomboldo announces the group is ready to move back to the other part of the world, he invites Linden and Campbell to go with them.\n",
"Captain Jim Linden leads a fact-finding mission on behalf of the EGGWE to discover the identity of a large, silvery, rope-like entity on a planet earmarked for the establishment of an inter-planetary trade agreement. Jim and his partner Split work together to observe the object, and, while doing so, they meet the local people called the Benzendella. Jim is a calm and effective leader; he has captained six similar missions in the past and is experienced in interacting with native populations in order to establish strong relationships for the EGGWE. This experience comes to bear when a hostile group attacks the Benzendellas, and Jim uses this as an opportunity to assist them with his ship's siren. This interaction establishes trust with the Benzendellas, and he moves to deepen that trust by giving a peace gift-- a music-playing medallion. After Jim and Split help save the Benzendellas from a second attack and revive Gravgak when he is wounded, the Benzendellas provide Jim and Split a place to stay as Jim recovers from his own injury. During his state of unconsciousness, Jim learns the Benzendella language and falls in love with Vauna, Tomboldo's daughter.",
"Captain Linden is a member of the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions (EGGWE) and Lieteuant “Split” Campbell’s superior officer. He is a confident man and loves teasing Split. After having been on one expedition before, Linden and Split were ready to arrive on this planet and investigate the Serpent River. As they look out at the seemingly-barren world through their telescope, Linden notices people emerging from underground. He watches in awe as they all gather around one man and a woman, seemingly about to perform some sort of ritual. The shadows of the trees move, but he sees nothing abnormal about this. Warriors rush out of the trees to attack the Benzendella, so Captian Linden saves them by having Split press the siren button, #16. He uses the EGGWE code of conduct when addressing the leader, Tomboldo, and offers him a gift. They are invited underground to their home but are attacked by the warriors again before they can descend. Gravgak is injured, so Linden and Split try to take care of him. When he awakens, he smashes his club into Linden’s head, possibly on purpose. \nLinden wakes, days later, underground with Vauna by his side. Vauna is Tomboldo’s daughter, and Linden quickly develops feelings for her. The EGGWE code forbids its members to marry any natives, and he reminds himself of that. \nHe speaks with Tomboldo and Gravgak, the latter of which explains that it was an accident, though the look in his eyes and his tone of voice says otherwise. Tomboldo invites Linden and Split to join them on their journey aboard the Serpent River, as they travel across the planet looking for safety. \n"
] |
50923
|
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
|
Who is Gravgak and what is his importance to the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Serpent River by Don Wilcox.
Relevant chunks:
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
Question:
Who is Gravgak and what is his importance to the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Gravgak is a guard who serves under Tomboldo, the leader of the Benzendella people, and escorts the humans after they meet. He is tall and muscular, with piercing eyes, and his limbs are painted with diamonds in green and black. He is knocked down during the second attack, and when Linden tries to tend to him, Gravgak knocks him out with his club. After Linden comes to a few weeks later, Gravgak apologizes for accidentally knocking him out, but it's not clear if he is being sincere about it being an accident. Linden's suspicions primarily come from Vauna's reaction, but Gravgak seems to hold some power over Vauna and Linden is not able to learn what Gravgak's true intentions are. ",
"Gravgak is one of the native Benzendella people. He is a tall guard with green and black diamonds painted on his legs. Tomboldo, the leader of the Benzendella, relies on Gravgak to make sure the group can travel safely to their dwellings after the initial attack, but Gravgak is more interested in the siren and trying to communicate with Linden and Campbell. When the sponge-tree warriors regroup and attack again, he grabs one of their clubs and confronts them as they advance—either rushing to fight them or to warn them to back away. When Linden and Campbell throw fire at the enemy, he is so close that the fire and blasts of rock knock him down. He looks suspiciously at Linden as he and Campbell minister to his wounds and use smelling salts to make Gravgak fully conscious, making him jump up while holding the club and sending the rock attached to the club flying into Linden’s head. Several days later after Linden comes to, Gravgak comes to see him and tells him the blow to Linden’s head was not intentional. Vauna appears not to believe him. As Gravgak leaves, he tells Vauna he wants to speak to her alone. Linden stops her until Gravgak yells at her, and she starts to leave with him; this time, her father stops them. Linden wonders if Gravgak and Vauna have a relationship, but he also considers the possibility that Gravgak is a traitor. \n\n",
"Gravgak is one of Tomboldo's most important guards. He is tall and muscular, and his legs and arms are covered with green and black diamond paintings. Jim notices his eyes first, which appear piercing and suspicious to him, and Gravgak continues to arouse his suspicions throughout the story. Gravgak keeps watch for the tree-disguised warriors and guards Jim and Split on their way back to the underground city. However, he shows signs of agitation and distraction and commands the two men to mimic the siren sounds along with the rest of Tomboldo's party. When the attackers once again descend upon their party and Jim throws a capsule bomb at them, Gravgak retrieves one of their clubs and charges. Jim interprets this behavior to mean one of two things--either Gravgak bravely defends his people or he intends to warn the attackers of Jim and Split's advanced weaponry. After another of Jim's capsule bombs injures Gravgak, Jim and Split attempt to attend to his wounds and resuscitate him. When he regains consciousness, he clubs Jim and knocks him out. After Jim recovers, Gravgak visits him to apologize, but Jim isn't sure if the attack was accidental, especially because Vauna doesn't seem to trust Gravgak. Vauna appears to be in some kind of relationship with Gravgak, whether as a lover or some kind of subservient. While this is not completely clear to Jim, he is certain that Vauna's distrust of Gravgak strengthens his feeling that Gravgak is a traitor.",
"Gravgak is one of the main sources of conflict and betrayal in this story. Gravgak is a very large warrior of the Benzendella people. He is strong and muscular. His arms and legs are painted with green and black diamonds. When Captain Linden first meets him, he describes Gravgak’s piercing eyes as suspicious. His motives are never truly known, but his actions betray him. \nAfter Linden and Split meet Tomboldo, Gravgak is sent to guard them. He rushes into battle and gets injured. Linden and Split heal him, but when he wakes up, he hits Linden over the head with a club. Whether or not he did that on purpose is up in the air. The injury Linden sustained required surgery and days of bed rest. It could have killed him. \nOnce Linden wakes up, Gravgak returns and aggressively demands Linden to get better. He claims that he did not mean to hit him on the head, but everyone doubts his sincerity and integrity. Even Vauna, Tomboldo’s daughter and Linden’s crush, does not believe Gravgak. However, she is bound to him in some way, perhaps by marriage, but her father comes first. Possibly a traitor, Linden will forever question Gravgak’s actions. \n"
] |
50923
|
THE SERPENT RIVER
By Don Wilcox
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Other Worlds May 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The Code was rigid—no fraternization with the peoples of other planets! Earth wanted no "shotgun weddings" of the worlds of space!
"Split" Campbell and I brought our ship down to a quiet landing on the summit of a mile-wide naked rock, and I turned to the telescope for a closer view of the strange thing we had come to see.
It shone, eighteen or twenty miles away, in the light of the late afternoon sun. It was a long silvery serpent-like
something
that crawled slowly over the planet's surface.
There was no way of guessing how large it was, at this distance. It might have been a rope rolled into shape out of a mountain—or a chain of mountains. It might have been a river of bluish-gray dough that had shaped itself into a great cable. Its diameter? If it had been a hollow tube, cities could have flowed through it upright without bending their skyscrapers. It was, to the eye, an endless rope of cloud oozing along the surface of the land. No, not cloud, for it had the compactness of solid substance.
We could see it at several points among the low foothills. Even from this distance we could guess that it had been moving along its course for centuries. Moving like a sluggish snake. It followed a deep-worn path between the nearer hills and the high jagged mountains on the horizon.
What was it?
"Split" Campbell and I had been sent here to learn the answers. Our sponsor was the well known "EGGWE" (the Earth-Galaxy Good Will Expeditions.) We were under the EGGWE Code. We were the first expedition to this planet, but we had come equipped with two important pieces of advance information. The Keynes-Roy roving cameras (unmanned) had brought back to the Earth choice items of fact about various parts of the universe. From these photos we knew (1) that man lived on this planet, a humanoid closely resembling the humans of the Earth; and
(2) that a vast cylindrical "rope" crawled the surface of this land, continuously, endlessly.
We had intentionally landed at what we guessed would be a safe distance from the rope. If it were a living thing, like a serpent, we preferred not to disturb it. If it gave off heat or poisonous gases or deadly vibrations, we meant to keep our distance. If, on the other hand, it proved to be some sort of vegetable—a vine of glacier proportions—or a river of some silvery, creamy substance—we would move in upon it gradually, gathering facts as we progressed. I could depend upon
"Split" to record all observable phenomena with the accuracy of split-hairs.
Split was working at the reports like a drudge at this very moment.
I looked up from the telescope, expecting him to be waiting his turn eagerly. I misguessed. He didn't even glance up from his books. Rare young Campbell! Always a man of duty, never a man of impulse!
"Here Campbell, take a look at the 'rope'."
"Before I finish the reports, sir? If I recall our Code, Section Two, Order of Duties upon Landing: A—"
"Forget the Code. Take a look at the rope while the sun's on it.... See it?"
"Yes sir."
"Can you see it's moving? See the little clouds of dust coming up from under its belly?"
"Yes sir. An excellent view, Captain Linden."
"What do you think of it, Split? Ever see a sight like that before?"
"No sir."
"Well, what about it? Any comments?"
Split answered me with an enthusiastic, "By gollies, sir!" Then, with restraint, "It's precisely what I expected from the photographs, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Relax, Split! That's the order. Relax!"
"Thanks—thanks, Cap!" That was his effort to sound informal, though coming from him it was strained. His training had given him an exaggerated notion of the importance of dignity and discipline.
He was naturally so conscientious it was painful. And to top it all, his scientific habit of thought made him want to stop and weigh his words even when speaking of casual things such as how much sugar he required in his coffee.
Needless to say, I had kidded him unmercifully over these traits. Across the millions of miles of space that we had recently traveled
(our first voyage together) I had amused myself at his expense. I had sworn that he would find, in time, that he couldn't even trim his fingernails without calipers, or comb his hair without actually physically splitting the hairs that cropped up in the middle of the part. That was when I had nicknamed him "Split"—and the wide ears that stuck out from his stubble-cut blond hair had glowed with the pink of selfconsciousness. Plainly, he liked the kidding. But if I thought I could rescue him from the weight of dignity and duty, I was mistaken.
Now he had turned the telescope for a view far to the right. He paused.
"What do you see?" I asked.
"I cannot say definitely. The exact scientific classification of the object I am observing would call for more detailed scrutiny—"
"You're seeing some sort of object?"
"Yes sir."
"What sort of object?"
"A living creature, sir—upright, wearing clothes—"
"A
man
?"
"To all appearances, sir—"
"You bounder, give me that telescope!"
2.
If you have explored the weird life of many a planet, as I have, you can appreciate the deep sense of excitement that comes over me when, looking out at a new world for the first time, I see a man-like animal.
Walking upright!
Wearing adornments in the nature of clothing!
I gazed, and my lungs filled with the breath of wonderment. A man! Across millions of miles of space—a man, like the men of the Earth.
Six times before in my life of exploration I had gazed at new realms within the approachable parts of our universe, but never before had the living creatures borne such wonderful resemblance to the human life of our Earth.
A man!
He might have been creeping on all fours.
He might have been skulking like a lesser animal.
He might have been entirely naked.
He was none of these—and at the very first moment of viewing him I felt a kinship toward him. Oh, he was primitive in appearance—but had my ancestors not been the same? Was this not a mirror of my own race a million years or so ago? I sensed that my own stream of life had somehow crossed with his in ages gone by. How? Who can ever know? By what faded charts of the movements through the sky will man ever be able to retrace relationships of forms of life among planets?
"Get ready to go out and meet him, Campbell," I said. "He's a friend."
Split Campbell gave me a look as if to say, Sir, you don't even know what sort of animal he is, actually, much less whether he's friendly or murderous.
"There are some things I can sense on first sight, Campbell. Take my word for it, he's a friend."
"I didn't say anything, sir."
"Good. Don't. Just get ready."
"We're going to go
out
—?"
"Yes," I said. "Orders."
"And meet both of them?" Split was at the telescope.
"Both?" I took the instrument from him. Both! "Well!"
"They seem to be coming out of the ground," Split said. "I see no signs of habitation, but apparently we've landed on top of an underground city—though I hasten to add that this is only an hypothesis."
"One's a male and the other's a female," I said.
"Another hypothesis," said Split.
The late evening sunshine gave us a clear view of our two "friends". They were fully a mile away. Split was certain they had not seen our ship, and to this conclusion I was in agreement. They had apparently come up out of the barren rock hillside to view the sunset. I studied them through the telescope while Split checked over equipment for a hike.
The man's walk was unhurried. He moved thoughtfully, one might guess. His bare chest and legs showed him to be statuesque in mold, cleanly muscled, fine of bone. His skin was almost the color of the cream-colored robe which flowed from his back, whipping lightly in the breeze. He wore a brilliant red sash about his middle, and this was matched by a red headdress that came down over his shoulders as a circular mantle.
The girl stood several yards distant, watching him. This was some sort of ritual, no doubt. He was not concerned with her, but with the setting sun. Its rays were almost horizontal, knifing through a break in the distant mountain skyline. He went through some routine motions, his moving arms highlighted by the lemon-colored light of evening.
The girl approached him. Two other persons appeared from somewhere back of her.... Three.... Four.... Five....
"Where do they come from?" Split had paused in the act of checking equipment to take his turn at the telescope. If he had not done so, I might not have made a discovery. The landscape was
moving
.
The long shadows that I had not noticed through the telescope were a prominent part of the picture I saw through the ship's window when I looked out across the scene with the naked eye. The shadows were moving.
They were tree shadows. They were moving toward the clearing where the crowd gathered. And the reason for their movement was that the trees themselves were moving.
"Notice anything?" I asked Split.
"The crowd is growing. We've certainly landed on top of a city." He gazed. "They're coming from underground."
Looking through the telescope, obviously he didn't catch the view of the moving trees.
"Notice anything else unusual?" I persisted.
"Yes. The females—I'm speaking hypothetically—but they
must
be females—are all wearing puffy white fur ornaments around their elbows. I wonder why?"
"You haven't noticed the trees?"
"The females are quite attractive," said Split.
I forgot about the moving trees, then, and took over the telescope. Mobile trees were not new to me. I had seen similar vegetation on other planets—"sponge-trees"—which possessed a sort of muscular quality. If these were similar, they were no doubt feeding along the surface of the slope below the rocky plateau. The people in the clearing beyond paid no attention to them.
I studied the crowd of people. Only the leader wore the brilliant garb. The others were more scantily clothed. All were handsome of build. The lemon-tinted sunlight glanced off the muscular shoulders of the males and the soft curves of the females.
"Those furry elbow ornaments on the females," I said to Split,
"they're for protection. The caves they live in must be narrow, so they pad their elbows."
"Why don't they pad their shoulders? They don't have anything on their shoulders."
"Are you complaining?"
We became fascinated in watching, from the seclusion of our ship. If we were to walk out, or make any sounds, we might have interrupted their meeting. Here they were in their native ritual of sunset, not knowing that people from another world watched. The tall leader must be making a speech. They sat around him in little huddles. He moved his arms in calm, graceful gestures.
"They'd better break it up!" Split said suddenly. "The jungles are moving in on them."
"They're spellbound," I said. "They're used to sponge-trees. Didn't you ever see moving trees?"
Split said sharply, "Those trees are marching! They're an army under cover. Look!"
I saw, then. The whole line of advancing vegetation was camouflage for a sneak attack. And all those natives sitting around in meeting were as innocent as a flock of sitting ducks. Split Campbell's voice was edged with alarm. "Captain! Those worshippers—how can we warn them? Oh-oh! Too late. Look!"
All at once the advancing sponge-trees were tossed back over the heads of the savage band concealed within. They were warriors—fifty or more of them—with painted naked bodies. They dashed forward in a wide semicircle, swinging crude weapons, bent on slaughter.
3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—
Jim
! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty
"friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split
could
drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"
"Hit number sixteen, Campbell."
Split touched the number sixteen signal.
The ship's siren wailed out over the land.
You could tell when the sound struck them. The circle of savage ones suddenly fell apart. The dancing broke into the wildest contortions you ever saw. As if they'd been spanked by a wave of electricity. The siren scream must have sounded like an animal cry from an unknown world. The attackers ran for the sponge-trees. The rootless jungle came to life. It jerked and jumped spasmodically down the slope. And our siren kept right on singing.
"Ready for that hike, Campbell? Give me my equipment coat." I got into it. I looked back to the telescope. The tall man of the party had behaved with exceptional calmness. He had turned to stare in our direction from the instant the siren sounded. He could no doubt make out the lines of our silvery ship in the shadows. Slowly, deliberately, he marched over the hilltop toward us.
Most of his party now scampered back to the safety of their hiding places in the ground. But a few—the brave ones, perhaps, or the officials of his group—came with him.
"He needs a stronger guard than that," Campbell grumbled.
Sixteen was still wailing. "Set it for ten minutes and come on," I said. Together we descended from the ship.
We took into our nostrils the tangy air, breathing fiercely, at first. We slogged along over the rock surface feeling our weight to be one-and-a-third times normal. We glanced down the slope apprehensively. We didn't want any footraces. The trees, however, were still retreating. Our siren would sing on for another eight minutes. And in case of further danger, we were equipped with the standard pocket arsenal of special purpose capsule bombs.
Soon we came face to face with the tall, stately old leader in the cream-and-red cloak.
Split and I stood together, close enough to exchange comments against the siren's wail. Fine looking people, we observed. Smooth faces. Like the features of Earth men. These creatures could walk down any main street back home. With a bit of makeup they would pass.
"Notice, Captain, they have strange looking eyes." "Very smooth."
"It's because they have no eyebrows ... no eye lashes." "Very smooth—handsome—attractive."
Then the siren went off.
The leader stood before me, apparently unafraid. He seemed to be waiting for me to explain my presence. His group of twelve gathered in close.
I had met such situations with ease before. "EGGWE" explorers come equipped. I held out a gift toward the leader. It was a singing medallion attached to a chain. It was disc-shaped, patterned after a large silver coin. It made music at the touch of a button. In clear, dainty bell tones it rang out its one tune, "Trail of Stars."
As it played I held it up for inspection. I placed it around my own neck, then offered it to the leader. I thought he was smiling. He was not overwhelmed by the "magic" of this gadget. He saw it for what it was, a token of friendship. There was a keenness about him that I liked. Yes, he was smiling. He bent his head forward and allowed me to place the gift around his neck.
"Tomboldo," he said, pointing to himself.
Split and I tried to imitate his breathy accents as we repeated aloud,
"Tomboldo."
We pointed to ourselves, in turn, and spoke our own names. And then, as the names of the others were pronounced, we tried to memorize each breathy sound that was uttered. I was able to remember four or five of them. One was Gravgak.
Gravgak's piercing eyes caused me to notice him. Suspicious eyes? I did not know these people's expressions well enough to be sure.
Gravgak was a guard, tall and muscular, whose arms and legs were painted with green and black diamond designs.
By motions and words we didn't understand, we inferred that we were invited to accompany the party back home, inside the hill, where we would be safe. I nodded to Campbell. "It's our chance to be guests of Tomboldo." Nothing could have pleased us more. For our big purpose—to understand the Serpent River—would be forwarded greatly if we could learn, through the people, what its meanings were. To analyze the river's substance, estimate its rate, its weight, its temperature, and to map its course—these facts were only a part of the information we sought. The fuller story would be to learn how the inhabitants of this planet regarded it: whether they loved or shunned it, and what legends they may have woven around it. All this knowledge would be useful when future expeditions of men from the Earth followed us (through EGGWE) for an extension of peaceful trade relationships.
Tomboldo depended upon the guard Gravgak to make sure that the way was safe. Gravgak was supposed to keep an eye on the line of floating trees that had taken flight down the hillside. Danger still lurked there, we knew. And now the siren that had frightened off the attack was silent. Our ship, locked against invaders, could be forgotten. We were guests of Tomboldo.
Gravgak was our guard, but he didn't work at it. He was too anxious to hear all the talk. In the excitement of our meeting, everyone ignored the growing darkness, the lurking dangers. Gravgak confronted us with agitated jabbering:
"Wollo—yeeta—vo—vandartch—vandartch! Grr—see—o—see—o—see—o!"
"See—o—see—o—see—o," one of the others echoed.
It began to make sense. They wanted us to repeat the siren noises. The enemy had threatened their lives. There could very well have been a wholesale slaughter. But as long as we could make the "see—o—see—o" we were all safe.
Split and I exchanged glances. He touched his hand to the equipment jacket, to remind me we were armed with something more miraculous than a yowling siren.
"See—o—see—o—see—o!" Others of Tomboldo's party echoed the demand. They must have seen the sponge-trees again moving toward our path.
"
See—o—see—o!
"
Our peaceful march turned into a spasm of terror. The sponge-trees came rushing up the slope, as if borne by a sudden gust of wind. They bounced over our path, and the war party spilled out of them.
Shouting. A wild swinging of clubs. And no cat-and-mouse tricks. No deliberate circling and closing in. An outright attack. Naked bodies gleaming in the semi-darkness. Arms swinging weapons, choosing the nearest victims. The luminous rocks on the ends of the clubs flashed. Shouting, screeching, hurling their clubs. The whizzing fury filled the air.
I hurled a capsule bomb. It struck at the base of a bouncing sponge-tree, and blew the thing to bits.
The attackers ran back into a huddle, screaming. Then they came forward, rushing defiantly.
Our muscular guard, Gravgak was too bold. He had picked up one of their clubs and he ran toward their advance, and to all of Tomboldo's party it must have appeared that he was bravely rushing to his death. Yet the gesture of the club he swung so wildly could have been intended as a
warning
! It could have meant, Run back, you fools, or these strange devils will throw fire at you.
I threw fire. And so did my lieutenant. He didn't wait for orders, thank goodness. He knew it was their lives or ours. Zip, zip, zip—BLANG-BLANG-BLANG! The bursts of fire at their feet ripped the rocks. The spray caught them and knocked them back. Three or four warriors in the fore ranks were torn up in the blasts. Others were flattened—and those who were able, ran.
They ran, not waiting for the cover of sponge-trees. Not bothering to pick up their clubs.
But the operation was not a complete success. We had suffered a serious casualty. The guard Gravgak. He had rushed out too far, and the first blast of fire and rock had knocked him down. Now Tomboldo and others of the party hovered over him.
His eyes opened a little. I thought he was staring at me, drilling me with suspicion. I worked over him with medicines. The crowd around us stood back in an attitude of awe as Split and I applied ready bandages, and held a stimulant to his nostrils that made him breath back to consciousness.
Suddenly he came to life. Lying there on his back, with the club still at his fingertips, he swung up on one elbow. The swift motion caused a cry of joy from the crowd. I heard a little of it—and then blacked out. For as the muscular Gravgak moved, his fingers closed over the handle of the club. It whizzed upward with him—apparently all by accident. The stone that dangled from the end of the club crashed into my head.
I went into instant darkness. Darkness, and a long, long silence.
4.
Vauna, the beautiful daughter of Tomboldo, came into my life during the weeks that I lay unconscious.
I must have talked aloud much during those feverish hours of darkness.
"Campbell!" I would call out of a nightmare. "Campbell, we're about to land. Is everything set? Check the instruments again, Campbell."
"S-s-sh!" The low hush of Split Campbell's voice would somehow penetrate my dream.
The voices about me were soft. My dreams echoed the soft female voices of this new, strange language.
"Campbell, are you there?... Have you forgotten the Code, Campbell?"
"Quiet, Captain."
"Who is it that's swabbing my face? I can't see."
"It's Vauna. She's smiling at you, Captain. Can't you see her?"
"Is this the pretty one we saw through the telescope?"
"One of them."
"And what of the other? There were two together. I remember—"
"Omosla is here too. She's Vauna's attendant. We're all looking after you, Captain Linden. Did you know I performed an operation to relieve the pressure on your brain? You must get well, Captain." The words of Campbell came through insistently.
After a silence that may have lasted for hours or days, I said,
"Campbell, you haven't forgot the EGGWE Code?"
"Of course not, Captain."
"Section Four?"
"Section Four," he repeated in a low voice, as if to pacify me and put me to sleep. "Conduct of EGGWE agents toward native inhabitants: A, No agent shall enter into any diplomatic agreement that shall be construed as binding—"
I interrupted. "Clause D?"
He picked it up. "D, no agent shall enter into a marriage contract with any native.... H-m-m. You're not trying to warn me, are you, Captain Linden? Or are you warning
yourself
?"
At that moment my eyes opened a little. Swimming before my blurred vision was the face of Vauna. I did remember her—yes, she must have haunted my dreams, for now my eyes burned in an effort to define her features more clearly. This was indeed Vauna, who had been one of the party of twelve, and had walked beside her father in the face of the attack. Deep within my subconscious the image of her beautiful face and figure had lingered. I murmured a single word of answer to Campbell's question. "Myself."
In the hours that followed, I came to know the soft footsteps of Vauna. The caverns in which she and her father and all these Benzendella people lived were pleasantly warm and fragrant. My misty impressions of their life about me were like the first impressions of a child learning about the world into which he has been born.
Sometimes I would hear Vauna and her attendant Omosla talking together. Often when Campbell would stop in this part of the cavern to inquire about me, Omosla would drop in also. She and Campbell were learning to converse in simple words. And Vauna and I—yes. If I could only avoid blacking out.
I wanted to see her.
So often my eyes would refuse to open. A thousand nightmares. Space ships shooting through meteor swarms. Stars like eyes. Eyes like stars. The eyes of Vauna, the daughter of Tomboldo. The sensitive stroke of Vauna's fingers, brushing my forehead, pressing my hand.
I regained my health gradually.
"Are you quite awake?" Vauna would ask me in her musical Benzendella words. "You speak better today. Your friend Campbell has brought you more recordings of our language, so you can learn to speak more. My father is eager to talk with you. But you must sleep more. You are still weak."
It gave me a weird sensation to awaken in the night, trying to adjust myself to my surroundings. The Benzendellas were sleep-singers. By night they murmured mysterious little songs through their sleep. Strange harmonies whispered through the caves.
And if I stirred restlessly, the footsteps of Vauna might come to me through the darkness. In her sleeping garments she would come to me, faintly visible in the pink light that filtered through from some corridor. She would whisper melodious Benzendella words and tell me to go back to sleep, and I would drift into the darkness of my endless dreams.
The day came when I awakened to see both Vauna and her father standing before me. Stern old Tomboldo, with his chalk-smooth face and not a hint of an eyebrow or eyelash, rapped his hand against my ribs, shook the fiber bed lightly, and smiled. From a pocket concealed in his flowing cape, he drew forth the musical watch, touched the button, and played, "Trail of Stars."
"I have learned to talk," I said.
"You have had a long sleep."
"I am well again. See, I can almost walk." But as I started to rise, the wave of blackness warned me, and I restrained my ambition. "I will walk soon."
"We will have much to talk about. Your friend has pointed to the stars and told me a strange story of your coming. We have walked around the ship. He has told me how it rides through the sky. I can hardly make myself believe." Tomboldo's eyes cast upward under the strong ridge of forehead where the eyebrows should have been. He was evidently trying to visualize the flight of a space ship. "We will have much to tell each other."
"I hope so," I said. "Campbell and I came to learn about the
serpent river
." I resorted to my own language for the last two words, not knowing the Benzendella equivalent.
I
made an eel-like motion with my arm. But they didn't understand. And before I could explain, the footsteps of other Benzendellas approached, and presently I looked around to see that quite an audience had gathered. The most prominent figure of the new group was the big muscular guard of the black and green diamond markings—Gravgak.
"You get well?" Gravgak said to me. His eyes drilled me closely.
"I get well," I said.
"The blow on the head," he said, "was not meant."
I looked at him. Everyone was looking at him, and I knew this was meant to be an occasion of apology. But the light of fire in Vauna's eyes told me that she did not believe. He saw her look, and his own eyes flashed darts of defiance. With an abrupt word to me, he wheeled and started off. "Get well!"
The crowd of men and women made way for him. But in the arched doorway he turned. "Vauna. I am ready to speak to you alone."
She started. I reached and barely touched her hand. She stopped. "I will talk with you later, Gravgak."
"Now!" he shouted. "Alone."
He stalked off. A moment later Vauna, after exchanging a word with her father, excused herself from the crowd and followed Gravgak.
From the way those in the room looked, I knew this must be a dramatic moment. It was as if she had acknowledged Gravgak as her master—or her lover. He had called for her. She had followed.
But her old father was still the master. He stepped toward the door.
"Vauna!... Gravgak!... Come back."
(I will always wonder what might have happened if he hadn't called them! Was my distrust of Gravgak justified? Had I become merely a jealous lover—or was I right in my hunch that the tall muscular guard was a potential traitor?)
Vauna reappeared at once. I believe she was glad that she had been called back.
Gravgak came sullenly. At the edge of the crowd in the arched doorway he stood scowling.
"While we are together," old Tomboldo said quietly, looking around at the assemblage, "I must tell you the decision of the council. Soon we will move back to the other part of the world."
There were low murmurs of approval through the chamber.
"We will wait a few days," Tomboldo went on, "until our new friend—" he pointed to me—"is well enough to travel. We would never leave him here to the mercy of the savage ones. He and his helper came through the sky in time to save us from being destroyed. We must never forget this kindness. When we ascend the
Kao-Wagwattl
, the ever moving
rope of life
, these friends shall come with us. On the back of the Kao-Wagwattl
they shall ride with us across the land
."
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about What is POSAT? by Phyllis Sterling Smith.
Relevant chunks:
What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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"\nIn 1953, an advertisement for the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth appears in magazines. The ad claims that POSAT is an ancient secret society looking for new members. Three individuals send away to receive a free booklet from them. Bill is a pharmacist who is down on his luck and out of a job. Elizabeth is a wealthy woman who lives with cats. Don is a research physicist who has a successful career and a wife, Betty. \n\nPOSAT sends Bill, Elizabeth, and Don three identical forms in the mail and asks for their responses. Bill is initially skeptical, but he hopes that POSAT will be able to turn his life around in some unexpected way. He answers the questions about his employment, religion, and finances. Elizabeth does the same enthusiastically. Although Don believes it’s a scam, he can’t squash his own curiosity, and he sends his answers in.\n\nIn return, Bill receives a pamphlet with vague descriptions for how to solve life’s problems. He finds the material useless, but he isn’t disappointed because he just landed a new job. Elizabeth discovers that she has been accepted into the society, and she must pay $5 a month. Lastly, Don receives a multiple choice exam, which he answers and sends back.\n\n\nDon receives a request to meet with the Grand Chairman at his work, and this surprises him because he never gave them his work address. He finds the warehouse and sees that it is windowless, rundown, and dirty. However, the waiting room contains beautiful rugs and paintings in ornate frames. He realizes that each painting is lit with a glowing tube that does not contain batteries, and he puts one of the lights in his pocket. It shocks him because his workplace is the only laboratory working on this exact product. He no longer trusts what is going on at POSAT and tries to leave, but the door is locked. \nDon is brought upstairs, and his fear increases when he looks into a high tech laboratory and sees scientists working on an atomic reactor. Dr. Crandon, Don’s former professor, appears and introduces himself as the Grand Chairman. He tells Don that POSAT has been around for over four hundred years, and its founder invented the atomic reactor. He did not have the technology to build it, and he realized that humanity was not ready for such a weapon. He decided to share his knowledge with other geniuses and keep it all a secret. Their goal was to get humanity to a point where information could be shared without the threat of violence and death. Crandon shows Don the world’s biggest computer, which is meant to learn humans’ motivation. Don’s test was put into the computer, and his responses indicate that he will join POSAT and be a valuable member. Bill was given a job to improve his life, and Elizabeth feels included and contributes financially. Don decides to join the secret society and work towards a more peaceful planet. \n",
"Various advertisements have gone through various magazines for POSAT, the \"Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth\", offering a booklet that can be requested in the mail. Various people sent for the booklet, including Bill Evans, a pharmacist currently without work, Miss Elizabeth Arnable, an eager woman excited to learn, and Donald Alford, a research physicist driven by curiosity. The three of them received an identical form in return, and each filled out the long questionnaire with a large amount of personal information. Donald's wife tried to convince him to fill the form out with false answers, but he was honest as the others were. A week after these questionnaires were sent, POSAT sent different envelopes to these three people. Bill Evans, for instance, received a standard pamphlet with metaphysical discussion. He was disappointed by this but was pleased to be starting a new job near the POSAT offices soon, which he did not realized was connected. Miss Arnable received several pamphlets and an offer to pay dues, which she did immediately. Donald Alford received a series of multiple choice questions about moral decisions surrounding potentially dangerous events. His answers got him an interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT, but it would be in the middle of a work day, almost a hundred miles away. Although he was surprised to have received the letter at his lab, because he had only given POSAT his home address, his curiosity drove him to take the interview. It took him some time to find the POSAT headquarters, hidden in the back of an alley, and he was struck by the elegance of the first room he was invited into. He was slightly taller than the people the room was built for, hitting his head on a light and having to bend over to look at paintings. He found an impossible-seeming lightbulb, that resembled a secret project he was working on but in later stages. He was locked in the room, but eventually escorted to see the Grand Chairman, passing over an incredible laboratory with an atomic reactor. It turns out the Grand Chairman was Dr. Crandon, Donald's mentor, which made Donald confused, as he had trusted Dr. Crandon but could not trust what was happening in the laboratory he had seen. Dr. Crandon explained that although most of their work was illegal, he considered it some of the most moral work being done. Dr. Crandon walked Donald through the history of the organization, waxing poetic about the founder's genius as a physical scientist and mathematician. He did not have the technology to act on his theories, but left enough information for people in the future to develop technologies, following what Crandon called the path to truth. The primary goal was for science to be used without disaster, and Donald struggles accepting this knowing that atomic bombs exist. The machine with which they were studying human motivation is what read the entry questionnaires. His curiosity wins and Donald joins the research group.",
"Three people separately read and react to an advertisement for POSAT, the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth, which promises secret truths that can alter the course of one's life. Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, finds hope in the promise of superhuman intervention to help pull him from his desperate financial situation. Miss Elizabeth Arnable, a cat enthusiast who doesn’t read, connects with the advertisement's religious and mystical undertones since she believes her cats to be reincarnated family members. Donald Alford, a research physicist, is the most skeptical among them, and his interest in POSAT is purely scientific; he wants to determine POSAT’s true purpose, and so he completes the autobiographical form all three of them receive in response to their individual inquiries for more information. The impractical, metaphysical pamphlet Bill receives in response to his form disappoints him; however, he also receives a job offer at a pharmacy attached to the very warehouse that also houses POSAT's headquarters. Miss Arnable receives a membership pin, several pamphlets full of hidden truths of ancient wisdom, and information regarding membership fees. Don Alford receives a questionnaire that appears to be some kind of personality test catered to him specifically, despite the fact he has thus far revealed nothing of his life to them. Don's wife, Betty, wonders if POSAT might be some kind of spy society. In response to his questionnaire, POSAT invites Don to their headquarters to meet with their Grand Chairman in order to conduct an interview prior to his membership acceptance. Don struggles to decide whether or not to attend the meeting, considering the headquarters is nearly one-hundred miles from his home, and the lab where he works typically frowns upon using work time for personal matters. However, he decides to go anyway, and he finds the headquarters is part of a massive warehouse that is also home to a printer's plant, upholstering shop, and a pharmacy where Bill Evans now works. A receptionist guides him to a waiting room, where he discovers a number of brightly-lit Renaissance-style paintings. When he accidentally dislodges a light tube, he realizes the technology keeping it lit resembles his own research back at the lab--research that has not yet been released for public consumption. When he meets the Grand Chairman, he begins to make sense of the true purpose of POSAT; the Grand Chairman is actually Dr. Crandon, a physicist whose research Don has admired for several decades. Dr. Crandon explains POSAT is a society started four hundred years ago by a genius mathematician and physical scientist whose knowledge and discoveries were so advanced and powerful, he felt they must be kept secret until the world was ready to handle them in a responsible fashion. He shows Don a large computing machine used to determine human motivations and predict their reactions, which had been used to assess Don's suitability for membership, and which will be used to contribute to the advancement of a peaceful society. Don agrees to join Dr. Crandon's cause.",
"An ad was placed in the paper and several magazines throughout town, describing POSAT, the Pepetual Order of Seekers After Truth. It speaks vaguely about wisdom, changing your life, and mastering knowledge. Three people look at the ad in interest. The first is Bill Evans, a recently unemployed pharmacist, desperate for a miracle. He needs another job, a better life, so he responds to the ad as a last resort. The second is Miss Elizabeth Arnable, a cat-lady who loves the radio. And finally, Donald Alford, a physicist with a caring wife. He was reading a paper by Dr. Crandon, his former professor when he came across the advertisement. He responded simply because he was curious, and because their symbol piqued his interest. It looked almost like the Bohr atom of helium. \nThey all received identical booklets in the mail, promising the same stuff as the advertisement, but with a new form. All threw filled it out. Bill Evans took a while to do so, but he did so eventually with his desperation in tow. Miss Arnable wrote five pages, including the lives of her cats, and asked how much she would need to pay to be a member of POSAT. \nBut Alford was more skeptical, so he showed the booklet to his wife. She knew he was going to fill it out anyway because his curiosity would not be sated till he had an answer. He did just that.\nThe next mailings were completely different. Bill Evans’ pamphlet was filled with vague and metaphysical realizations. But, the same day, he was miraculously offered a job at a wholesale pharmacy. Miss Arnable was accepted, sent pamphlets about cats, and asked to pay $5/month. After filling out a multiple-choice questionnaire, Alford was asked to come in for an interview with the Grand Master during his workday. The letter was sent to his office; the address he never revealed. He took off the day to drive there and arrived at a small entrance down an alley near a wholesale pharmacy. He entered and climbed the stairs to the receptionist. She took his information then led him into the waiting room. Beautiful paintings lined the wall, lit up by radioactive, self-contained lights. He was in shock after making this discovery. His lab was working on such an invention, but failing at making the right material. He pocketed the light. \nThe receptionist led him across a balcony into the Grand Master’s office. Below the balcony was a highly advanced laboratory. Equipment that had yet to be invented. When Alford entered the office, he realized the man in front of him was Dr. Crandon, his professor, and fellow scientist. He explains the history of POSAT, how advanced they are, and their current mission: to find out more about human motivation to solve world issues. Dr. Crandon shows him a supercomputer that is on the path to making this huge discovery. Alford joins POSAT. \n"
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51336
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What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
|
What is the history of POSAT?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about What is POSAT? by Phyllis Sterling Smith.
Relevant chunks:
What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
Question:
What is the history of POSAT?
Answer:
|
[
"The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth, POSAT, is an ancient secret society. It was founded by a genius of a man who lived during the Italian Renaissance, roughly 400 years ago. The founder was a mathematician and scientist, and he invented calculus, created the quantum theory of light, and wrote Maxwell’s equations. However, he did not get credit for any of these ideas. He also designed the atomic reactor that Don sees in the laboratory of the building. The founder understood how dangerous the atomic bomb was, and he did not want to give his peers the tools to create such a powerful weapon. He did not trust men who were at war with one another over political power. Still, he did not want his knowledge to vanish when he died, so he created POSAT. He was willing to share his scientific and mathematical secrets, but he did not wish for untrustworthy people to get their hands on the information until it would be safe to do so. The founder also wanted POSAT to work towards a more peaceful society where everyone could be trusted to share knowledge and information without the fear of it leading to catastrophic events. \n\nIn the centuries since the society was founded, the members have invented new tools and technologies that are not available anywhere else in the world, like the atomic reactor shield and the lightbulbs that hang above each Renaissance painting in the waiting room. Yet, the secret society’s main goal is to create a civilized society, not new inventions. In an effort to make that vision a reality, members of POSAT created a very large computer that seeks to decode human motivation. The computer used Don’s multiple choice questionnaire to determine that Don would be a good fit for the society because he is trustworthy. Although it seems like POSAT should involve more renowned scientists and peacekeepers to make sure it accomplishes its mission, it must also guard all of its secrets, and in an increasingly surveilled state, that would be nearly impossible to do while also including great thought leaders. \n",
"POSAT, or The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth, is a secret society that considers itself \"ancient and honorable\", which has been active since the Renaissance Era. They put ads in magazines to attract new members, stating that anyone can unlock the key to life through their pamphlets. The organization is led by a Grand Chairman, a spot currently filled by Dr. Crandon. When the organization was founded in the Renaissance Era, some four hundred years before the time in which the story takes place, the technology did not exist to act on the founder's theories. For instance, the atomic reactor that powers the headquarters has only been in use for twenty years, but was designed four hundred years ago. This was how the founder operated, well ahead of his time, developing ideas in the physical sciences far past what anyone would have expected, even of a genius. He donated a number of paintings from his personal collection, so much of the contemporary headquarters has his mark on it, even from an aesthetic standpoint. ",
"POSAT was founded four hundred years prior to the events of the story by a genius mathematician and physical scientist and a group of fellow \"brilliant men\" capable of advancing his scientific discoveries and committing them to secrecy. The founder lived during the Italian Renaissance and used his own mind to invent and discover, among other things, calculus, the quantum theory of light, the theory of relativity, wave mechanics, and nuclear reactions. The founder realized mankind was not able to wield this knowledge responsibly, so POSAT was designed to withhold this information until the time came in history when they could be trusted with it. POSAT operates its headquarters in a large warehouse, in the center of which is a large lab full of researchers where Dr. Crandon oversees the continuing work of the founder. The warehouse also houses businesses like the pharmacy that employs desperate people like Bill Evans, who turns to POSAT as a last resort, and the print shop that publishes advertisements that reach people like Elizabeth Arnable, whose belief in mysticism borders on religious.",
"The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth was founded four centuries ago by a genius. He discovered radioactivity and nuclear bombs hundreds of years before the rest of the world, designed the atomic reactor, invented calculus, and more. Impossible things that have yet to be discovered or invented in the 21st Century. The idea behind POSAT was to keep this man’s inventions a secret from the rest of the world, as well as continue making such amazing technological advances. \nSo, POSAT continued as a secret society, committing members who were dedicated to maintaining secrecy and developing ideas and theories that could be used to save the world, not harm it. They are currently dedicated to discovering more about the human motivation and how it can be used to perpetual world peace. This way all discoveries that are made in the future (however dangerous or wonderful they may be) will not be used to incite war, human disaster, or violence. \n"
] |
51336
|
What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
|
Why is Mr. Crandon an important character in the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about What is POSAT? by Phyllis Sterling Smith.
Relevant chunks:
What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
Question:
Why is Mr. Crandon an important character in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Mr. Crandon is a member of POSAT, and he is also a professor, published author, and researcher. Don admires Mr. Crandon as an intellectual before he realizes that Crandon is also the Grand Chairman of POSAT. When Don finds out that Crandon is a member of the secret society, he is shocked. Don knows that Crandon is a highly intelligent person, and POSAT seems like a scam. When Crandon explains the truth about the ancient society, its history, its goals, and its ability to pick the finest individuals to join its ranks, Don listens carefully because of his prior connection to Crandon. Had the Grand Chairman been a complete stranger to Don, he might have written the entire experience off as a manipulative scheme or a simply impossible endeavor. After one short conversation and a tour of the building, Don is willing to join POSAT as a member. Crandon is a persuasive salesman and a true believer in the organization and its goal to make a more civil society. ",
"Dr. Crandon contributes two major things to this story. The first is that he was Donald Alford's mentor as a research scientist, so he was in no small part responsible for Donald's training, giving him the tools he needed to do the research he was doing at work and could be doing with POSAT. The other major role that he plays is that of Grand Chairman of POSAT. Not only is he in charge of the organization as a whole, but he is the one who explains the history and the goals of the organization to the scientists that are recruited. ",
"Dr. Crandon is a research physicist and former professor of Don Alford. When Don first discovers the POSAT ad, he is reading a research paper by Crandon in The Bulletin of Physical Research. Crandon's instruction grounded Alford in the mastery of and commitment to the scientific process and thereby contributed to his skepticism regarding POSAT's promise of mystical wisdom. Therefore, Don is shocked to discover the Grand Chairman of POSAT is Dr. Crandon himself. Crandon delineates the history of POSAT as a hundreds-of-years-old organization meant to preserve and advance the knowledge and discoveries of its founder. The discoveries run the gamut of technology, mathematics, and physical science and pre-date contemporary discoveries such as atomic reactors by centuries. As Crandon explains, these discoveries have been kept secret because humanity could not be trusted to use them responsibly. In the meantime, POSAT has developed a massive computing machine that can analyze human behavior to determine motivations and predict reactions to certain events and knowledge. Crandon hopes that by joining POSAT, Don can use his knowledge of physics to contribute to their mission and, eventually, peacefully introduce their discoveries to society.",
"Dr. Crandon was a professor at a university that Donald Alford once attended. As a fellow scientist, he wrote several research papers and was even published in scientific journals. Donald Alford was reading his latest scholarly journal article when he came across the advertisement for POSAT. It’s clear that Alford admires Dr. Crandon both as his former student and as a scientist. It is later revealed that Dr. Crandon is in fact the Grand Master of the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. He is not the founder, however, but he serves his organization with pride. Alford’s curiosity, scientific attitude, and admiration for Dr. Crandon were several factors in his admittance to joining POSAT. "
] |
51336
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What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about What is POSAT? by Phyllis Sterling Smith.
Relevant chunks:
What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
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"“What is POSAT?” takes place in an unspecified city. Three of the characters, Bill, Elizabeth, and Don, lead ordinary lives and hold typical jobs. Don is a physicist, and the laboratory he works at is located about 100 miles away from the POSAT headquarters. \n\nThe POSAT headquarters is the main setting described in the story. It is located at the end of an alley in an unassuming warehouse, next to a wholesale pharmacy, an upholstery shop, and a printer’s plant. The building is almost entirely windowless, and the only sign that the secret society is housed there is the organization’s emblem on its door. \n\nVisitors enter a dark room with a staircase. A buzzer goes off to let the employees of POSAT know that someone has arrived. The reception room is dusty and highly unimpressive. The wallpaper and rugs are worn out and gray, and the woman who works at the beat-up reception desk is average looking. \n\nThe next room that some visitors are allowed access to is entirely different from the first. There are gorgeous Renaissance paintings on the walls, framed with ornate gold decoration and lit up with individual lights. The rug is lush, and the room is impeccably clean. \n\nFinally, when visitors are invited to meet with the Grand Chairman, they must enter a balcony area located in the interior of the warehouse. There is a frosted glass door with the Grand Chairman’s name on it. On the lower floor, there is a laboratory that is visible from the balcony. The lab contains advanced equipment that is not available anywhere else in the world. It also houses an atomic reactor that is shielded by a bluish-green invention that is about an inch thick The shield is semi-transparent but also incredibly strong. Beneath the balcony, down a steep flight of stairs, there is a gigantic computing machine. Everything that goes on in the POSAT building must remain confidential, and very few individuals are told the secrets of the ancient society. \n",
"The primary setting in this story is that of the POSAT headquarters. Hidden in a back alley in a warehouse district, it proved hard to find for Donald when he was invited for an interview. In this same warehouse are a number of businesses, including a pharmacy where POSAT places Bill with a job. The first room in the POSAT headquarters is a dingy waiting room, which acts as a facade or screening room of sorts so that they do not show their hand to people they are not sure will want to enter the organization. The real waiting room is a gorgeous, ornate room with Renaissance paintings on the walls, part of the personal collection of POSAT's founder. There was a beautiful rug on the floor, some filing cabinets, and some curious fluorescent lights that seemed more advanced that Donald figured possible. Past this room, the Grand Chairman has an office that is also ornate, with a frosted glass door, but between this office and the waiting room there is a balcony. This balcony acts like a bridge between the two rooms over a laboratory. This laboratory is visible from this walkway and is full of extremely advanced technology that Donald is not able to identify by sight, as it is beyond its time. Even the glass-like substance acting as a shielding window between him and the laboratory is too thin to be a substance known by his contemporaries. ",
"The story centers on three main characters who separately discover the advertisements of the POSAT in different locations. Bill Evans discovers it while reading through a magazine left on a bus seat. Elizabeth Arnable finds the advertisement in the Antivivisectionist Gazette, which she reads in a room with her many cats and a radio. Don Alford receives his invitation to meet with the Grand Chairman of POSAT, which is located nearly one hundred miles away from his home. The POSAT headquarters calls a giant, sprawling warehouse home. The concrete, windowless warehouse covers an entire city block and also houses a printer's plant, upholstering shop, and a pharmacy where Bill Evans finds new employment. Several alleys make way for loading platforms at various locations around the warehouse as well. Don Alford finds the entrance to POSAT at the back of an alley, and he enters through a frosted glass door and walks up a dark, murky stairwell to a dingy reception room. The room Don enters beyond the reception area, however, is ornately decorated with rugs and paintings from the Renaissance periods. Bright tubes light the paintings from above, which astonishes Don because they are neither battery-powered nor wired to anything. His meeting with the Grand Chairman of POSAT takes place outside the room with the paintings on a balcony overlooking the vast warehouse interior. Looking out upon the warehouse floor, Don observes several men appearing to conduct experiments in some kind of laboratory populated with scientific instruments he has never before seen (except for an atomic reactor obscured by a bluish-green plastic). At the bottom of another flight of stairs, Dr. Crandon shows Don the world's largest computer, which was used to analyze his questionnaire results and may be used to predict and motivate human behavior.",
"What is POSAT? by Phyllis Sterling Smith takes place in several different settings. However, much of it takes place in the POSAT headquarters itself. A long dark stairway leads to the receptionist’s room. It’s dusty and a little unattractive, but the window that lets in sunlight helps hide that fact. The waiting room is grand and luxurious, filled with ancient, Renaissance paintings and ornate gilding. The paintings were lit up from the bottom by contained radioactive lights. The headquarters has a laboratory in it as well, filled with previously uninvented equipment, such as an atomic reactor. Scientists and worker bees are hard at work, studiously bent over their equipment. In the basement rests a supercomputer equipped with the ability to understand humans based on their answers to multiple-choice questions or the papers they write. "
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51336
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What is POSAT?
By PHYLLIS STERLING SMITH
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Of course coming events cast their shadows before, but this shadow was 400 years long!
The following advertisement appeared in the July 1953 issue of several magazines:
MASTERY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE CAN BE YOURS!
What is the secret source of those profound principles that can solve the problems of life? Send for our FREE booklet of explanation.
Do not be a leaf in the wind! YOU can alter the course of your life!
Tap the treasury of Wisdom through the ages!
The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth
POSAT
an ancient secret society
Most readers passed it by with scarcely a glance. It was, after all, similar to the many that had appeared through the years under the name of that same society. Other readers, as their eyes slid over the familiar format of the ad, speculated idly about the persistent and mildly mysterious organization behind it. A few even resolved to clip the attached coupon and send for the booklet—sometime—when a pen or pencil was nearer at hand.
Bill Evans, an unemployed pharmacist, saw the ad in a copy of Your Life and Psychology that had been abandoned on his seat in the bus. He filled out the blanks on the coupon with a scrap of stubby pencil.
"You can alter the course of your life!" he read again. He particularly liked that thought, even though he had long since ceased to believe it. He actually took the trouble to mail the coupon. After all, he had, literally, nothing to lose, and nothing else to occupy his time.
Miss Elizabeth Arnable was one of the few to whom the advertisement was unfamiliar. As a matter of fact, she very seldom read a magazine. The radio in her room took the place of reading matter, and she always liked to think that it amused her cats as well as herself. Reading would be so selfish under the circumstances, wouldn't it? Not but what the cats weren't almost smart enough to read, she always said.
It just so happened, however, that she had bought a copy of the Antivivisectionist Gazette the day before. She pounced upon the POSAT ad as a trout might snap at a particularly attractive fly. Having filled out the coupon with violet ink, she invented an errand that would take her past the neighborhood post office so that she could post it as soon as possible.
Donald Alford, research physicist, came across the POSAT ad tucked at the bottom of a column in The Bulletin of Physical Research . He was engrossed in the latest paper by Dr. Crandon, a man whom he admired from the point of view of both a former student and a fellow research worker. Consequently, he was one of the many who passed over the POSAT ad with the disregard accorded to any common object.
He read with interest to the end of the article before he realized that some component of the advertisement had been noted by a region of his brain just beyond consciousness. It teased at him like a tickle that couldn't be scratched until he turned back to the page.
It was the symbol or emblem of POSAT, he realized, that had caught his attention. The perpendicularly crossed ellipses centered with a small black circle might almost be a conventionalized version of the Bohr atom of helium. He smiled with mild skepticism as he read through the printed matter that accompanied it.
"I wonder what their racket is," he mused. Then, because his typewriter was conveniently at hand, he carefully tore out the coupon and inserted it in the machine. The spacing of the typewriter didn't fit the dotted lines on the coupon, of course, but he didn't bother to correct it. He addressed an envelope, laid it with other mail to be posted, and promptly forgot all about it. Since he was a methodical man, it was entrusted to the U.S. mail early the next morning, together with his other letters.
Three identical forms accompanied the booklet which POSAT sent in response to the three inquiries. The booklet gave no more information than had the original advertisement, but with considerable more volubility. It promised the recipient the secrets of the Cosmos and the key that would unlock the hidden knowledge within himself—if he would merely fill out the enclosed form.
Bill Evans, the unemployed pharmacist, let the paper lie unanswered for several days. To be quite honest, he was disappointed. Although he had mentally disclaimed all belief in anything that POSAT might offer, he had watched the return mails with anticipation. His own resources were almost at an end, and he had reached the point where intervention by something supernatural, or at least superhuman, seemed the only hope.
He had hoped, unreasonably, that POSAT had an answer. But time lay heavily upon him, and he used it one evening to write the requested information—about his employment (ha!), his religious beliefs, his reason for inquiring about POSAT, his financial situation. Without quite knowing that he did so, he communicated in his terse answers some of his desperation and sense of futility.
Miss Arnable was delighted with the opportunity for autobiographical composition. It required five extra sheets of paper to convey all the information that she wished to give—all about her poor, dear father who had been a missionary to China, and the kinship that she felt toward the mystic cults of the East, her belief that her cats were reincarnations of her loved ones (which, she stated, derived from a religion of the Persians; or was it the Egyptians?) and in her complete and absolute acceptance of everything that POSAT had stated in their booklet. And what would the dues be? She wished to join immediately. Fortunately, dear father had left her in a comfortable financial situation.
To Donald Alford, the booklet seemed to confirm his suspicion that POSAT was a racket of some sort. Why else would they be interested in his employment or financial position? It also served to increase his curiosity.
"What do you suppose they're driving at?" he asked his wife Betty, handing her the booklet and questionnaire.
"I don't really know what to say," she answered, squinting a little as she usually did when puzzled. "I know one thing, though, and that's that you won't stop until you find out!"
"The scientific attitude," he acknowledged with a grin.
"Why don't you fill out this questionnaire incognito, though?" she suggested. "Pretend that we're wealthy and see if they try to get our money. Do they have anything yet except your name and address?"
Don was shocked. "If I send this back to them, it will have to be with correct answers!"
"The scientific attitude again," Betty sighed. "Don't you ever let your imagination run away with the facts a bit? What are you going to give for your reasons for asking about POSAT?"
"Curiosity," he replied, and, pulling his fountain pen from his vest pocket, he wrote exactly that, in small, neat script.
It was unfortunate for his curiosity that Don could not see the contents of the three envelopes that were mailed from the offices of POSAT the following week. For this time they differed.
Bill Evans was once again disappointed. The pamphlet that was enclosed gave what apparently meant to be final answers to life's problems. They were couched in vaguely metaphysical terms and offered absolutely no help to him.
His disappointment was tempered, however, by the knowledge that he had unexpectedly found a job. Or, rather, it had fallen into his lap. When he had thought that every avenue of employment had been tried, a position had been offered him in a wholesale pharmacy in the older industrial part of the city. It was not a particularly attractive place to work, located as it was next to a large warehouse, but to him it was hope for the future.
It amused him to discover that the offices of POSAT were located on the other side of the same warehouse, at the end of a blind alley. Blind alley indeed! He felt vaguely ashamed for having placed any confidence in them.
Miss Arnable was thrilled to discover that her envelope contained not only several pamphlets, (she scanned the titles rapidly and found that one of them concerned the sacred cats of ancient Egypt), but that it contained also a small pin with the symbol of POSAT wrought in gold and black enamel. The covering letter said that she had been accepted as an active member of POSAT and that the dues were five dollars per month; please remit by return mail. She wrote a check immediately, and settled contentedly into a chair to peruse the article on sacred cats.
After a while she began to read aloud so that her own cats could enjoy it, too.
Don Alford would not have been surprised if his envelope had shown contents similar to the ones that the others received. The folded sheets of paper that he pulled forth, however, made him stiffen with sharp surprise.
"Come here a minute, Betty," he called, spreading them out carefully on the dining room table. "What do you make of these?"
She came, dish cloth in hand, and thoughtfully examined them, one by one. "Multiple choice questions! It looks like a psychological test of some sort."
"This isn't the kind of thing I expected them to send me," worried Don. "Look at the type of thing they ask. 'If you had discovered a new and virulent poison that could be compounded from common household ingredients, would you (1) publish the information in a daily newspaper, (2) manufacture it secretly and sell it as rodent exterminator, (3) give the information to the armed forces for use as a secret weapon, or (4) withhold the information entirely as too dangerous to be passed on?'"
"Could they be a spy ring?" asked Betty. "Subversive agents? Anxious to find out your scientific secrets like that classified stuff that you're so careful of when you bring it home from the lab?"
Don scanned the papers quickly. "There's nothing here that looks like an attempt to get information. Besides, I've told them nothing about my work except that I do research in physics. They don't even know what company I work for. If this is a psychological test, it measures attitudes, nothing else. Why should they want to know my attitudes?"
"Do you suppose that POSAT is really what it claims to be—a secret society—and that they actually screen their applicants?"
He smiled wryly. "Wouldn't it be interesting if I didn't make the grade after starting out to expose their racket?"
He pulled out his pen and sat down to the task of resolving the dilemmas before him.
His next communication from POSAT came to his business address and, paradoxically, was more personal than its forerunners.
Dear Doctor Alford:
We have examined with interest the information that you have sent to us. We are happy to inform you that, thus far, you have satisfied the requirements for membership in the Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth. Before accepting new members into this ancient and honorable secret society, we find it desirable that they have a personal interview with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Accordingly, you are cordially invited to an audience with our Grand Chairman on Tuesday, July 10, at 2:30 P.M. Please let us know if this arrangement is acceptable to you. If not, we will attempt to make another appointment for you.
The time specified for the appointment was hardly a convenient one for Don. At 2:30 P.M. on most Tuesdays, he would be at work in the laboratory. And while his employers made no complaint if he took his research problems home with him and worried over them half the night, they were not equally enthusiastic when he used working hours for pursuing unrelated interests. Moreover, the headquarters of POSAT was in a town almost a hundred miles distant. Could he afford to take a whole day off for chasing will-o-wisps?
It hardly seemed worth the trouble. He wondered if Betty would be disappointed if he dropped the whole matter. Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home, he couldn't consult her about it without telephoning.
Since the letter had been sent to the laboratory instead of his home! But it was impossible!
He searched feverishly through his pile of daily mail for the envelope in which the letter had come. The address stared up at him, unmistakably and fearfully legible. The name of his company. The number of the room he worked in. In short, the address that he had never given them!
"Get hold of yourself," he commanded his frightened mind. "There's some perfectly logical, easy explanation for this. They looked it up in the directory of the Institute of Physics. Or in the alumni directory of the university. Or—or—"
But the more he thought about it, the more sinister it seemed. His laboratory address was available, but why should POSAT take the trouble of looking it up? Some prudent impulse had led him to withhold that particular bit of information, yet now, for some reason of their own, POSAT had unearthed the information.
His wife's words echoed in his mind, "Could they be a spy ring? Subversive agents?"
Don shook his head as though to clear away the confusion. His conservative habit of thought made him reject that explanation as too melodramatic.
At least one decision was easier to reach because of his doubts. Now he knew he had to keep his appointment with the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
He scribbled a memo to the department office stating that he would not be at work on Tuesday.
At first Don Alford had some trouble locating the POSAT headquarters. It seemed to him that the block in which the street number would fall was occupied entirely by a huge sprawling warehouse, of concrete construction, and almost entirely windowless. It was recessed from the street in several places to make room for the small, shabby buildings of a wholesale pharmacy, a printer's plant, an upholstering shop, and was also indented by alleys lined with loading platforms.
It was at the back of one of the alleys that he finally found a door marked with the now familiar emblem of POSAT.
He opened the frosted glass door with a feeling of misgiving, and faced a dark flight of stairs leading to the upper floor. Somewhere above him a buzzer sounded, evidently indicating his arrival. He picked his way up through the murky stairwell.
The reception room was hardly a cheerful place, with its battered desk facing the view of the empty alley, and a film of dust obscuring the pattern of the gray-looking wallpaper and worn rug. But the light of the summer afternoon filtering through the window scattered the gloom somewhat, enough to help Don doubt that he would find the menace here that he had come to expect.
The girl addressing envelopes at the desk looked very ordinary. Not the Mata-Hari type , thought Don, with an inward chuckle at his own suspicions. He handed her the letter.
She smiled. "We've been expecting you, Dr. Alford. If you'll just step into the next room—"
She opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Don stepped through it.
The sight of the luxurious room before him struck his eyes with the shock of a dentist's drill, so great was the contrast between it and the shabby reception room. For a moment Don had difficulty breathing. The rug—Don had seen one like it before, but it had been in a museum. The paintings on the walls, ornately framed in gilt carving, were surely old masters—of the Renaissance period, he guessed. Although he recognized none of the pictures, he felt that he could almost name the artists. That glowing one near the corner would probably be a Titian. Or was it Tintorretto? He regretted for a moment the lost opportunities of his college days, when he had passed up Art History in favor of Operational Circuit Analysis.
The girl opened a filing cabinet, the front of which was set flush with the wall, and, selecting a folder from it, disappeared through another door.
Don sprang to examine the picture near the corner. It was hung at eye level—that is, at the eye level of the average person. Don had to bend over a bit to see it properly. He searched for a signature. Apparently there was none. But did artists sign their pictures back in those days? He wished he knew more about such things.
Each of the paintings was individually lighted by a fluorescent tube held on brackets directly above it. As Don straightened up from his scrutiny of the picture, he inadvertently hit his head against the light. The tube, dislodged from its brackets, fell to the rug with a muffled thud.
Now I've done it! thought Don with dismay. But at least the tube hadn't shattered.
In fact—it was still glowing brightly! His eyes registered the fact, even while his mind refused to believe it. He raised his eyes to the brackets. They were simple pieces of solid hardware designed to support the tube.
There were no wires!
Don picked up the slender, glowing cylinder and held it between trembling fingers. Although it was delivering as much light as a two or three hundred watt bulb, it was cool to the touch. He examined it minutely. There was no possibility of concealed batteries.
The thumping of his heart was caused not by the fact that he had never seen a similar tube before, but because he had. He had never held one in his hands, though. The ones which his company had produced as experimental models had been unsuccessful at converting all of the radioactivity into light, and had, of necessity, been heavily shielded.
Right now, two of his colleagues back in the laboratory would still be searching for the right combination of fluorescent material and radioactive salts with which to make the simple, efficient, self-contained lighting unit that he was holding in his hand at this moment!
But this is impossible! he thought. We're the only company that's working on this, and it's secret. There can't be any in actual production!
And even if one had actually been successfully produced, how would it have fallen into the possession of POSAT, an Ancient Secret Society, The Perpetual Order of Seekers After Truth?
The conviction grew in Don's mind that here was something much deeper and more sinister than he would be able to cope with. He should have asked for help, should have stated his suspicions to the police or the F.B.I. Even now—
With sudden decision, he thrust the lighting tube into his pocket and stepped swiftly to the outer door. He grasped the knob and shook it impatiently when it stuck and refused to turn. He yanked at it. His impatience changed to panic. It was locked!
A soft sound behind him made him whirl about. The secretary had entered again through the inner door. She glanced at the vacant light bracket, then significantly at his bulging pocket. Her gaze was still as bland and innocent as when he had entered, but to Don she no longer seemed ordinary. Her very calmness in the face of his odd actions was distressingly ominous.
"Our Grand Chairman will see you now," she said in a quiet voice.
Don realized that he was half crouched in the position of an animal expecting attack. He straightened up with what dignity he could manage to find.
She opened the inner door again and Don followed her into what he supposed to be the office of the Grand Chairman of POSAT.
Instead he found himself on a balcony along the side of a vast room, which must have been the interior of the warehouse that he had noted outside. The girl motioned him toward the far end of the balcony, where a frosted glass door marked the office of the Grand Chairman.
But Don could not will his legs to move. His heart beat at the sight of the room below him. It was a laboratory, but a laboratory the like of which he had never seen before. Most of the equipment was unfamiliar to him. Whatever he did recognize was of a different design than he had ever used, and there was something about it that convinced him that this was more advanced. The men who bent busily over their instruments did not raise their eyes to the figures on the balcony.
"Good Lord!" Don gasped. "That's an atomic reactor down there!" There could be no doubt about it, even though he could see it only obscurely through the bluish-green plastic shielding it.
His thoughts were so clamorous that he hardly realized that he had spoken aloud, or that the door at the end of the balcony had opened.
He was only dimly aware of the approaching footsteps as he speculated wildly on the nature of the shielding material. What could be so dense that only an inch would provide adequate shielding and yet remain semitransparent?
His scientist's mind applauded the genius who had developed it, even as the alarming conviction grew that he wouldn't—couldn't—be allowed to leave here any more. Surely no man would be allowed to leave this place alive to tell the fantastic story to the world!
"Hello, Don," said a quiet voice beside him. "It's good to see you again."
"Dr. Crandon!" he heard his own voice reply. " You're the Grand Chairman of POSAT?"
He felt betrayed and sick at heart. The very voice with which Crandon had spoken conjured up visions of quiet lecture halls and his own youthful excitement at the masterful and orderly disclosure of scientific facts. To find him here in this mad and treacherous place—didn't anything make sense any longer?
"I think we have rather abused you, Don," Dr. Crandon continued. His voice sounded so gentle that Don found it hard to think there was any evil in it. "I can see that you are suspicious of us, and—yes—afraid."
Don stared at the scene below him. After his initial glance to confirm his identification of Crandon, Don could not bear to look at him.
Crandon's voice suddenly hardened, became abrupt. "You're partly right about us, of course. I hate to think how many laws this organization has broken. Don't condemn us yet, though. You'll be a member yourself before the day is over."
Don was shocked by such confidence in his corruptibility.
"What do you use?" he asked bitterly. "Drugs? Hypnosis?"
Crandon sighed. "I forgot how little you know, Don. I have a long story to tell you. You'll find it hard to believe at first. But try to trust me. Try to believe me, as you once did. When I say that much of what POSAT does is illegal, I do not mean immoral. We're probably the most moral organization in the world. Get over the idea that you have stumbled into a den of thieves."
Crandon paused as though searching for words with which to continue.
"Did you notice the paintings in the waiting room as you entered?"
Don nodded, too bewildered to speak.
"They were donated by the founder of our Organization. They were part of his personal collection—which, incidentally, he bought from the artists themselves. He also designed the atomic reactor we use for power here in the laboratory."
"Then the pictures are modern," said Don, aware that his mouth was hanging open foolishly. "I thought one was a Titian—"
"It is," said Crandon. "We have several original Titians, although I really don't know too much about them."
"But how could a man alive today buy paintings from an artist of the Renaissance?"
"He is not alive today. POSAT is actually what our advertisements claim—an ancient secret society. Our founder has been dead for over four centuries."
"But you said that he designed your atomic reactor."
"Yes. This particular one has been in use for only twenty years, however."
Don's confusion was complete. Crandon looked at him kindly. "Let's start at the beginning," he said, and Don was back again in the classroom with the deep voice of Professor Crandon unfolding the pages of knowledge in clear and logical manner. "Four hundred years ago, in the time of the Italian Renaissance, a man lived who was a super-genius. His was the kind of incredible mentality that appears not in every generation, or even every century, but once in thousands of years.
"Probably the man who invented what we call the phonetic alphabet was one like him. That man lived seven thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, and his discovery was so original, so far from the natural course of man's thinking, that not once in the intervening seven thousand years has that device been rediscovered. It still exists only in the civilizations to which it has been passed on directly.
"The super-genius who was our founder was not a semanticist. He was a physical scientist and mathematician. Starting with the meager heritage that existed in these fields in his time, he began tackling physical puzzles one by one. Sitting in his study, using as his principal tool his own great mind, he invented calculus, developed the quantum theory of light, moved on to electromagnetic radiation and what we call Maxwell's equations—although, of course, he antedated Maxwell by centuries—developed the special and general theories of relativity, the tool of wave mechanics, and finally, toward the end of his life, he mathematically derived the packing fraction that describes the binding energy of nuclei—"
"But it can't be done," Don objected. "It's an observed phenomenon. It hasn't been derived." Every conservative instinct that he possessed cried out against this impossible fantasy. And yet—there sat the reactor, sheathed in its strange shield. Crandon watched the direction of Don's glance.
"Yes, the reactor," said Crandon. "He built one like it. It confirmed his theories. His calculations showed him something else too. He saw the destructive potentialities of an atomic explosion. He himself could not have built an atomic bomb; he didn't have the facilities. But his knowledge would have enabled other men to do so. He looked about him. He saw a political setup of warring principalities, rival states, intrigue, and squabbles over political power. Giving the men of his time atomic energy would have been like handing a baby a firecracker with a lighted fuse.
"What should he have done? Let his secrets die with him? He didn't think so. No one else in his age could have derived the knowledge that he did. But it was an age of brilliant men. Leonardo. Michelangelo. There were men capable of learning his science, even as men can learn it today. He gathered some of them together and founded this society. It served two purposes. It perpetuated his discoveries and at the same time it maintained the greatest secrecy about them. He urged that the secrets be kept until the time when men could use them safely. The other purpose was to make that time come about as soon as possible."
Crandon looked at Don's unbelieving face. "How can I make you see that it is the truth? Think of the eons that man or manlike creatures have walked the Earth. Think what a small fraction of that time is four hundred years. Is it so strange that atomic energy was discovered a little early, by this displacement in time that is so tiny after all?"
"But by one man," Don argued.
Crandon shrugged. "Compared with him, Don, you and I are stupid men. So are the scientists who slowly plodded down the same road he had come, stumbling first on one truth and then the succeeding one. We know that inventions and discoveries do not occur at random. Each is based on the one that preceded it. We are all aware of the phenomenon of simultaneous invention. The path to truth is a straight one. It is only our own stupidity that makes it seem slow and tortuous.
"He merely followed the straight path," Crandon finished simply.
Don's incredulity thawed a little. It was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility.
But if it were true! A vast panorama of possible achievements spread before him.
"Four hundred years!" he murmured with awe. "You've had four hundred years head-start on the rest of the world! What wonders you must have uncovered in that time!"
"Our technical achievements may disappoint you," warned Crandon.
"Oh, they're way beyond anything that you are familiar with. You've undoubtedly noticed the shielding material on the reactor. That's a fairly recent development of our metallurgical department. There are other things in the laboratory that I can't even explain to you until you have caught up on the technical basis for understanding them.
"Our emphasis has not been on physical sciences, however, except as they contribute to our central project. We want to change civilization so that it can use physical science without disaster."
For a moment Don had been fired with enthusiasm. But at these words his heart sank.
"Then you've failed," he said bitterly. "In spite of centuries of advance warning, you've failed to change the rest of us enough to prevent us from trying to blow ourselves off the Earth. Here we are, still snarling and snapping at our neighbors' throats—and we've caught up with you. We have the atomic bomb. What's POSAT been doing all that time? Or have you found that human nature really can't be changed?"
"Come with me," said Crandon.
He led the way along the narrow balcony to another door, then down a steep flight of stairs. He opened a door at the bottom, and Don saw what must have been the world's largest computing machine.
"This is our answer," said Crandon. "Oh, rather, it's the tool by which we find our answer. For two centuries we have been working on the newest of the sciences—that of human motivation. Soon we will be ready to put some of our new knowledge to work. But you are right in one respect, we are working now against time. We must hurry if we are to save our civilization. That's why you are here. We have work for you to do. Will you join us, Don?"
"But why the hocus-pocus?" asked Don. "Why do you hide behind such a weird front as POSAT? Why do you advertise in magazines and invite just anyone to join? Why didn't you approach me directly, if you have work for me to do? And if you really have the answers to our problems, why haven't you gathered together all the scientists in the world to work on this project—before it's too late?"
Crandon took a sighing breath. "How I wish that we could do just that! But you forget that one of the prime purposes of our organization is to maintain the secrecy of our discoveries until they can be safely disclosed. We must be absolutely certain that anyone who enters this building will have joined POSAT before he leaves. What if we approached the wrong scientist? Centuries of accomplishment might be wasted if they attempted either to reveal it or to exploit it!
"Do you recall the questionnaires that you answered before you were invited here? We fed the answers to this machine and, as a result, we know more about how you will react in any given situation than you do yourself. Even if you should fail to join us, our secrets would be safe with you. Of course, we miss a few of the scientists who might be perfect material for our organization. You'd be surprised, though, at how clever our advertisements are at attracting exactly the men we want. With the help of our new science, we have baited our ads well, and we know how to maintain interest. Curiosity is, to the men we want, a powerful motivator."
"But what about the others?" asked Don. "There must be hundreds of applicants who would be of no use to you at all."
"Oh, yes," replied Crandon. "There are the mild religious fanatics. We enroll them as members and keep them interested by sending pamphlets in line with their interests. We even let them contribute to our upkeep, if they seem to want to. They never get beyond the reception room if they come to call on us. But they are additional people through whom we can act when the time finally comes.
"There are also the desperate people who try POSAT as a last resort—lost ones who can't find their direction in life. For them we put into practice some of our newly won knowledge. We rehabilitate them—anonymously, of course. Even find jobs or patch up homes. It's good practice for us.
"I think I've answered most of your questions, Don. But you haven't answered mine. Will you join us?"
Don looked solemnly at the orderly array of the computer before him. He had one more question.
"Will it really work? Can it actually tell you how to motivate the stubborn, quarrelsome, opinionated people one finds on this Earth?"
Crandon smiled. "You're here, aren't you?"
Don nodded, his tense features relaxing.
"Enroll me as a member," he said.
|
What is the narrator’s relationship to the mysterious voice in his dreams?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about I, the Unspeakable by Walter J. Sheldon.
Relevant chunks:
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
Question:
What is the narrator’s relationship to the mysterious voice in his dreams?
Answer:
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[
"As the narrator finds it increasingly difficult to find a sexual partner as a result of his state-appointed designation, he begins to hear a mysterious female voice in his dreams. She first encourages him to change his name. Initially, he worries that his sleep-learner, a wearable head device which enables learning during sleep, has malfunctioned, but he finds no evidence of this. \nThe narrator hears the voice nearly every night. He often worries about the voice, as the contents of its speech are heretical. She encourages him to go to the Govpub office, a sort of government office in his locality, and he eventually obliges. \nOn the night before the narrator is slated to take a transport to the capital to change his name, he hears the voice again. It encourages him to persevere, and that he is attracted to Lara, a woman he had met earlier in the week. The voice further pushes him to pursue a relationship with Lara once he is able to change his name.\n",
"The mysterious voice always come to the main character during his dreams. It insists that he should “do it,” thus change his way of living. Because of his name, he has lost his job, and he is not able to mate. Even living an everyday life is quite difficult. The voice wants him to change that. She does not state that she want him to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. The narrator’s difficulty in finding a new job and in having a normal social life negatively affects him because of name and no post. He feels lonely, thus there is a desire to change his name. The urge to reproduce himself becomes unbearable. He concoctes all sorts of wild schemes. The mysterious voice encourages him to dare to change his name, and find the freedom. When he even catches himeself wondering just how he'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be. The voice will appear at night and tell him the prompts. He absorbs the concepts unconsciously. He follows what the voice leads him to do. On the night before he board the ship for Center One, he thinks of objections to refute the voice. He thinks of his life now, and how breaking away from it will be very difficult. However, even though he is still hesitating if he should go, the voice seems to understand him very well. It reminds him of Lara, of how there will be a way to change his name, and to take her with him. ",
"The narrator experiences a voice in his dreams that encourages him to take risks, particularly regarding changing his name. He hears the voice practically every night, and describes it as a woman's voice: intense, seductive, and intriguing. The voice, though enticing, troubles the narrator, as he is concerned about the consequences of the actions that she is suggesting. However, as he continues to hear the voice every night, he starts to consider obeying it. The voice then drives him to begin the journey of changing his name, which is risky and radical in his society, and also tempts him in pursuing Lara and gaining freedom.",
"The mysterious voice in the narrator’s dreams talks in a seductive tone that was low and intense. The voice in his dreams went against the narrator’s conformists ideals that fit the State in the Northem. It suggests non-standard actions in an emotional tone that is unthinkable behavior in the Northem. The actions the voice suggest are ones of nonconformity and criticisms against the State. The narrator is hesitant and unsure about the voice’s presence. The voice continues to encourage the narrator to change his name. It even suggests that he should act on his attraction to Lara. "
] |
51210
|
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
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How does the narrator’s name affect his social life?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about I, the Unspeakable by Walter J. Sheldon.
Relevant chunks:
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
Question:
How does the narrator’s name affect his social life?
Answer:
|
[
"The narrator, who was designated an unspeakably vulgar four-letter designation during the last renumbering, has been negatively affected by his new name. Because of its distracting effect on those who learn it, he is forced to resign from his job studying magnetic mechanics and assume non-productive status, which in turn hampers his ability to acquire realfood. Theoretical research which the narrator privately conducts could not be published. His designation further prevents him from participating in group games at the rec center, special interest clubs, and State Loyalty chapters. The narrator is unable to mate since, at the Eugenic Centers where mating is regulated by the State, he must submit an application which must be approved by women who are authorized to mate with him.",
"His social life is heavily affected by his name. He cannot get himself off the N/P status with his name. Firslty, he loses his job due to this name. He can still remember the day that he got his name, and the embarrasement that came with it. His boss finds his name making the company less efficient, making him resign. Secondly, he cannot find any new job. Each of the employer, hearing his name, would tell him that they will call of something comes up. But they never do. Secondly, he can hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. No special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters would allow him to join them; simply because of his name, he can scarcely submit any findings for publication, at least not under his name. Moreover, because he is at N/P status, he cannot even get his order because the distributer tells him to get to the end of the line. And the food packages never reachese the end. Lastly, he cannot mate, no one at the Eugenic Center would even bother to call him back after hearing his name. No woman would want to mate with him. Thus, he feels terribly lonely. ",
"The narrator's name makes it difficult for him to lead a normal life, and instead makes him very lonely. At the beginning of the story, the narrator's chief lets him go from his place of employment, because of the difficulties that his name brought to the workplace. He has trouble getting a new job, despite his impressive expertise, because of his name. This makes the narrator stuck in the Non-Productive status, which interrupts his everyday life, including on realfood day, joining games and clubs, and even being unable to publish anything with his name on it. These difficulties also apply for mating; the narrator is unable to find a partner and finds himself extremely lonely. ",
"The narrator is embarrassed by his name and upset with it due to its effect on his social life. Women and others, in general, become quite embarrassed when they hear his name. People seem to not want to associate with him due to his name. He loses his job because of his name, though the manager does not directly state that it is the reason. People do not want him to join their group games, clubs, or State Loyalty chapters and his research is unable to be submitted for publication. Because people have adverse reactions to his name, the narrator is lonely due to the lack of his social life. In addition, because of his name, the narrator is not able to mate with a woman. His inability to find a woman that will mate with him creates a longing and a desire for him to mate with a woman. "
] |
51210
|
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
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What appears to be the role of the State in the Northem?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about I, the Unspeakable by Walter J. Sheldon.
Relevant chunks:
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
Question:
What appears to be the role of the State in the Northem?
Answer:
|
[
"Northem, one of the two superstates of the world and home to the Narrator, is ruled by the State. It is highly efficient, and allocates alphanumeric designations to its citizens to be used as names. In the most recent renumbering, the State assigns the narrator an unspeakable four-letter designation. \n\tThe State, through its officers the Deacons, enforces norms of acceptability. These norms include the ranges of physical attractiveness within which women are required to stay, the flat tone of voice in which citizens must speak, and the facial expressions citizens are allowed to display. Additionally, the State regulates sexual behaviour: mating is only allowed in Eugenic Centers, and those who infract upon sexual norms are sent to a prison planet called Marscol. \n\tThe State further regulates the allocation of realfood, such as eggs, which is a valuable commodity. When the balance of trade between Northem and Southem, the other superstate, fluctuates, more or less realfood becomes available. Non-productive members of society, so long as they are conformists, or loyal members of the state, are cared for by the State.\n",
"The State is currently ruling over Northem. They’ve set rules that must be followed by the citizens, those that infract and do not obey will be send to Marscol. Those that follow the rules, the states will provide food to them. Thus, the State cultivate and organize conformists, and tell them to obey rules. Moreover, because the old designations were not efficient, and there are more than two billion people in Northem. Thus the State has decided to introduce a new renumbering system that would be benificial to both the Northm and the Southem. Thus everyone was renumbered. They each receives a six digits along with four digits of prefix or sufix. \n\nFurthermore, the State favors short and succinct languages. It prefers efficiency. They changed the numbering system because it was not efficient; the boss was trying to ease the main character out because he desired an efficient organization; the cyb asked for efficient words when the main character was the Govpub Office. \n\nAlso, there had been political differences between the Northern and Southern states. During those times, they each spread longitudinally across the globe. While not in war currently, both of the states are geared up for it. ",
"The Northem acts as the moral, civilized, and orderly opposition to the Southem. The State helps to enforce this order and civility, primarily by the renumbering of its citizens. This structured system of naming attempts to place citizens on similar levels and address each other formally. To challenge this naming system would be to question the authority of the State. Society is also divided into Producers and Non-Producers; the Non-Producers are seen as draining of the Northem, reinforcing productivity as a defining value of the State. The State also aids in enforcing mating regulations; the narrator notes that pre-atomic civilization had free mating, where public affection and partnership was common; however, mating is now a State-regulated activity as provided by Eugenic Centers.",
"The citizens of Northem are conformists that dare do not go against the State nor criticize the State. The State regulates nearly every aspect of a person’s life. The State of Northem is in charge of renumbering, assigning a work designation, food allotments, sleeping arrangements, and mating abilities for its citizens. Renumbering is claimed to help the war-type struggle against Southem. With the new designation, every person was assigned six digits and four letters as a prefix or suffix. "
] |
51210
|
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about I, the Unspeakable by Walter J. Sheldon.
Relevant chunks:
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The narrator is awoken by a female voice in his head. He recounts his time as a conformist citizen of Northem, a futuristic dystopian civilization: one day, he wakes up and regards himself in the mirror, observing signs of aging on his face. He sees the toll of the past two years, since the renumbering. \nThe narrator explains that, as part of ensuring the efficiency of Northem, the designation of each citizen is periodically changed. In the most recent one, everyone was assigned six numerical digits and a prefix or suffix of four letters, which often spelled something pronounceable – for the narrator, the four letters spelled an unspeakably vulgar word. As a result, the narrator is forced to infract from his job and assume non-productive status and begins encountering difficulties in quotidien tasks, such as receiving his realfood package. Furthermore, his designation prevents him from acquiring gainful employment and reassuming productive status, as well as the ability to mate. \nThe narrator then recounts hearing the woman’s voice for the first time. She encourages him to change his name, a difficult thing to do because of its implied criticism of the state. The voice returns in his sleep, nearly every night. Driven by his loneliness and social ostracization, the narrator brings himself to the Govpub Office, a sort of government center, in an attempt to change his designation. \nIn the underground office of his local Govpub Office, the narrator navigates his way to the Numbering and Identity section with help of a cyb, an automated assistant. In the round room that is the Number and Identity department, he observes a remarkably attractive woman at the information desk. Though he is nervous at first, fearing that he will have to share with her his embarrassing name, he dismisses his hesitance and approaches her. He reluctantly shares his name, and asks that she direct him to information concerning state serial designations. \nAs the girl, whose name she reveals is LARA, leads the narrator to information bank 29 where the requested information is stored, they share an inappropriate moment: Lara trips and the narrator grabs her arms. Lara’s demeanor changes, and she now conducts herself in an all-business fashion. At bank 29, Lara explains to the narrator the tasks he must complete in order to change his name, including traveling to the capital. On their way back to the main room, the narrator makes a joke which elicits a laugh from Lara. As she enters the rotunda, she abruptly stops laughing. The narrator, following closely behind, quickly realizes why: two Deacons, officers of the state, are at the central desk. \nOn the night before his departure to the capital, the narrator once again hears the mysterious female voice in his head. She tells him that he is attracted to Lara. On the transport to the capital the narrator sees a young couple holding hands, and pictures himself with Lara in their position.\n",
"The story starts with the main character having a dream that tells him to do something. Later we learn that the voice in his dream is telling him to escape from the life that he is living now. We learn that there had been an atomic disaster that changed the way people live. The main character explains that now everyone has a code as their name. It consists of six digits with a four letter prefix or suffix. And two years ago when he got his name, it was so unusual and embarrassing that no one even wanted to pronounce it. And the name is the reason he lost his job; it is the reason that he cannot get a woman who would agree to mate with him. He was okay at first with this N/P (Non-Producer) status, however, later he realizes that the boredom of being a N/P is too much. He goes looking for jobs. However, it disappointed him again. When the employer hears about his specialty, they look very delight. However, when he hands them his tag with his name on it, they always tell him that they will call if anything turns up. But just like what happened with the Eugenic Center, no one called. The main character further complains about being an N/P, it might sound great at first, but he cannot even get a package.\n\nFinally, with the voice in his dream telling him to “do it” every night, he decided to go to the Govpub Office in Center Four to look for ways that he can change his name. At the N. & I. he gets attracted to the information desk girl, L-A-R-A 339/827. He asked her for information regarding how State Serial, thus the names, are assigned, and how they can be changed. After hearing his name, she is a bit shocked, but then she decides to help him out. Then later she points out that he needs to get a travel permit in order to get to Opsych, The Office of Psychological Adjustment. Apparently, Opsych is the only place that can authorize a change to the State Serial. She tells him to explain how his State Serial has affected his E.A.C, and then there may be a chance that they will change it. Even though he is still doubtful that night, the next day he goes to the jetcopter stage and board the ship for Center One. ",
"The narrator awakes after hearing a feminine voice call out to him in his dreams; it is a voice he is used to hearing, but is nevertheless bothersome. As he wakes up, the chief calls him into work, where he practices magnetic mechanics in hopes of developing space travel beyond Mars. The chief tells the narrator that he would like to switch him to another department; the narrator responds by resigning from him job. The world of Mars, divided into the Northem and Southem, has practices in regulating its civilians. One of these was a renaming of everyone in the Northem, where everyone was given four letters and a series of numbers. The narrator's name is unfortunate and unspeakable, and creates difficulty in his profession, causing him to lose his job. The narrator then becomes unemployed, given the Non-Productive status, and struggles to find another job due to his name. The narrator's name also disrupts other aspects of daily life, including mating and social interaction. The narrator considers changing his name, but decides that it would be seen as criticism to the State. However, one night, the voice calls out to him again in his dreams, urging him to change his name. The next day, the narrator is led to the Govpub office by the voice. There, he is led to the Numbering and Identity section, where he meets Lara, sitting at the information desk. The narrator is immediately attracted to Lara, who tells him that names can be changed if he moves to a higher Emotional Adjustment Category. The narrator, already having achieved the highest EAC, argues that if anything, the difficulties his name has given him have lowered it. Lara advises that he pose this argument to the Office of Psychological Adjustment, where he gets a travel permit the next day. That night, the voice in his dreams encourages him yet again to go on this journey, and the following morning he boards the ship, where he notices two prisoners aboard, holding hands despite their lack of freedom. The narrator then considers what it would be like to be there with Lara, nonconforming but happy.",
"The plot begins with a narrator discussing his morning routine as a citizen of Northem. Northem is located on Earth after the atomic period. He discusses the process of renumbering. The narrator mentions how his designation has been unfortunate since he was assigned it as it is embarrassing and causes people not to want to associate with him. The narrator has an important job but is eventually let go because of his name. As a result of losing his job, he is placed on a Non-Productive status, limiting his ability to require goods and where he can live. An N/P status is not looked upon as good by other citizens of Northem. \n\nThe narrator describes how because of his name and he cannot get a job, mate, or have a social life. Because of the rules of the State, it is unthinkable to change a person’s assigned name. The narrator desperately wants to mate and thinks of ideas on how he might be able to mate. When he sleeps, a seductive voice comes to the narrator in his dreams. The voice encourages the narrator to change his name, even though the idea would be nonconformist according to Northem standards. On the 17th day of the 9th month, the narrator decides to try to change his name and heads to a Govpub office. He is then directed to the Numbering and Identity office where he meets a woman that he finds very attractive. He tells her his name and she reacts negatively, but then recovers. They talk casually, not a common occurrence in Northem. The narrator manages to make Lara, the girl in the office, blush. \n\nLara discusses how she can help the narrator change his name and tells him that he has to go to the Capital and go to the Office of Psychological Adjustment. He needs a travel permit to go to the capital. Over the next day, he is excited about the possibility of his name actually being changed. The voice in his dream continues to encourage him to get his name changed. While on the transportation to the capital, he sees two prisoners who appear to be a couple. They display emotions that he describes as vulgar. Yet, he is curious about their relationship as they sit holding hands. He expresses a desire to be in the same position as the couple, but with him and Lara instead. \n"
] |
51210
|
I, the Unspeakable
By WALT SHELDON
Illustrated by LOUIS MARCHETTI
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction April 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"What's in a name?" might be very dangerous to ask in certain societies, in which sticks and stones are also a big problem!
I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
" Do it! " she said. " Please do it! For me! "
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk ... and to a citizen of Northem, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southem had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn't worried about my appearance when I'd been with the Office of Weapons. There, I'd been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds.
I'd go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion.
Would I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out, and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a little too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
If you were disappointed with your new designation, you didn't complain. You didn't want a sudden visit from the Deacons during the night.
There had to be renumbering. We all understood that. With the population of Northem already past two billion, the old designations were too clumsy. Renumbering was efficient. It contributed to the good of Northem. It helped advance the warless struggle with Southem.
The equator is the boundary. I understand that once there was a political difference and that the two superstates sprawled longitudinally, not latitudinally, over the globe. Now they are pretty much the same. There is the truce, and they are both geared for war. They are both efficient states, as tightly controlled as an experiment with enzymes, as microsurgery, as the temper of a diplomat.
We were renumbered, then, in Northem. You know the system: everybody now has six digits and an additional prefix or suffix of four letters. Stateleader, for instance, has the designation AAAA-111/111. Now, to address somebody by calling off four letters is a little clumsy. We try to pronounce them when they are pronounceable. That is, no one says to Stateleader, "Good morning, A-A-A-A." They say, "Good morning, Aaaa."
Reading the last quote, I notice a curious effect. It says what I feel. Of course I didn't feel that way on that particular morning. I was still conformal; the last thing in my mind was that I would infract and be psycho-scanned.
Four letters then, and in many cases a pronounceable four letter word.
A four letter word.
Yes, you suspect already. You know what a four letter word can be.
Mine was.
It was unspeakable.
The slight weight on my forehead reminded me that I still wore my sleep-learner. I'd been studying administrative cybernetics, hoping to qualify in that field, although it was a poor substitute for a space drive expert. I removed the band and stepped across the room and turned off the oscillator. I went back to my egg and my bitter memories.
I will never forget the first day I received my new four letter combination and reported it to my chief, as required. I was unthinkably embarrassed. He didn't say anything. He just swallowed and choked and became crimson when he saw it. He didn't dare pass it to his secretarial engineer; he went to the administrative circuits and registered it himself.
I can't blame him for easing me out. He was trying to run an efficient organization, after all, and no doubt I upset its efficiency. My work was important—magnetic mechanics was the only way to handle quanta reaction, or the so-called non-energy drive, and was therefore the answer to feasible space travel beyond our present limit of Mars—and there were frequent inspection tours by Big Wheels and Very Important Persons.
Whenever anyone, especially a woman, asked my name, the embarrassment would become a crackling electric field all about us. The best tactic was just not to answer.
The chief called me in one day. He looked haggard.
"Er—old man," he said, not quite able to bring himself to utter my name, "I'm going to have to switch you to another department. How would you like to work on nutrition kits? Very interesting work."
"Nutrition kits? Me? On nutrition kits?"
"Well, I—er—know it sounds unusual, but it justifies. I just had the cybs work it over in the light of present regulations, and it justifies."
Everything had to justify, of course. Every act in the monthly report had to be covered by regulations and cross-regulations. Of course there were so many regulations that if you just took the time to work it out, you could justify damn near anything. I knew what the chief was up to. Just to remove me from my post would have taken a year of applications and hearings and innumerable visits to the capital in Center One. But if I should infract—deliberately infract—it would enable the chief to let me go. The equivalent of resigning.
"I'll infract," I said. "Rather than go on nutrition kits, I'll infract."
He looked vastly relieved. "Uh—fine," he said. "I rather hoped you would."
It took a week or so. Then I was on Non-Productive status and issued an N/P book for my necessities. Very few luxury coupons in the N/P book. I didn't really mind at first. My new living machine was smaller, but basically comfortable, and since I was still a loyal member of the state and a verified conformist, I wouldn't starve.
But I didn't know what I was in for.
I went from bureau to bureau, office to office, department to department—any place where they might use a space drive expert. A pattern began to emerge; the same story everywhere. When I mentioned my specialty they would look delighted. When I handed them my tag and they saw my name, they would go into immediate polite confusion. As soon as they recovered they would say they'd call me if anything turned up....
A few weeks of this and I became a bit dazed.
And then there was the problem of everyday existence. You might say it's lucky to be an N/P for a while. I've heard people say that. Basic needs provided, worlds of leisure time; on the surface it sounds attractive.
But let me give you an example. Say it is monthly realfood day. You go to the store, your mouth already watering in anticipation. You take your place in line and wait for your package. The distributor takes your coupon book and is all ready to reach for your package—and then he sees the fatal letters N/P. Non-Producer. A drone, a drain upon the State. You can see his stare curdle. He scowls at the book again.
"Not sure this is in order. Better go to the end of the line. We'll check it later."
You know what happens before the end of the line reaches the counter. No more packages.
Well, I couldn't get myself off N/P status until I got a post, and with my name I couldn't get a post.
Nor could I change my name. You know what happens when you try to change something already on the records. The very idea of wanting change implies criticism of the State. Unthinkable behavior.
That was why this curious dream voice shocked me so. The thing that it suggested was quite as embarrassing as its non-standard, emotional, provocative tone.
Bear with me; I'm getting to the voice—to her —in a moment.
I want to tell you first about the loneliness, the terrible loneliness. I could hardly join group games at any of the rec centers. I could join no special interest clubs or even State Loyalty chapters. Although I dabbled with theoretical research in my own quarters, I could scarcely submit any findings for publication—not with my name attached. A pseudonym would have been non-regulation and illegal.
But there was the worst thing of all. I could not mate.
Funny, I hadn't thought about mating until it became impossible. I remember the first time, out of sheer idleness, I wandered into a Eugenic Center. I filled out my form very carefully and submitted it for analysis and assignment. The clerk saw my name, and did the usual double-take. He coughed and swallowed and fidgeted.
He said, "Of course you understand that we must submit your application to the woman authorized to spend time in the mating booths with you, and that she has the right to refuse."
"Yes, I understand that."
"M'm," he said, and dismissed me with a nod.
I waited for a call in the next few weeks, still hoping, but I knew no woman would consent to meet a man with my name, let alone enter a mating booth with him.
The urge to reproduce myself became unbearable. I concocted all sorts of wild schemes.
I might infract socially and be classified a nonconform and sent to Marscol. I'd heard rumors that in that desolate land, on that desolate planet, both mingling and mating were rather disgustingly unrestricted. Casual mating would be terribly dangerous, of course, with all the wild irradiated genes from the atomic decade still around, but I felt I'd be willing to risk that. Well, almost....
About then I began to have these dreams. As I've told you, in the dream there was only this woman's seductive voice. The first time I heard it I awoke in a warm sweat and swore something had gone wrong with the sleep-learner. You never hear the actual words with this machine, of course; you simply absorb the concepts unconsciously. Still, it seemed an explanation. I checked thoroughly. Nothing wrong.
The next night I heard the woman's voice again.
" Try it ," she said. " Do it. Start tomorrow to get your name changed. There will be a way. There must be a way. The rules are so mixed up that a clever man can do almost anything. Do it, please—for me. "
She was not only trying to get me to commit nonconformity, but making heretical remarks besides. I awoke that time and half-expected a Deacon to pop out of the tube and turn his electric club upon me.
And I heard the voice nearly every night.
It hammered away.
" What if you do fail? Almost anything would be better than the miserable existence you're leading now! "
One morning I even caught myself wondering just how I'd go about this idea of hers. Wondering what the first step might be.
She seemed to read my thoughts. That night she said, " Consult the cybs in the Govpub office. If you look hard enough and long enough, you'll find a way. "
Now, on this morning of the seventeenth day in the ninth month, I ate my boiled egg slowly and actually toyed with the idea. I thought of being on productive status again. I had almost lost my fanatical craving to be useful to the State, but I did want to be busy—desperately. I didn't want to be despised any more. I didn't want to be lonely. I wanted to reproduce myself.
I made my decision suddenly. Waves of emotion carried me along. I got up, crossed the room to the directory, and pushbuttoned to find the location of the nearest Govpub office.
I didn't know what would happen and almost didn't care.
II
Like most important places, the Govpub Office in Center Four was underground. I could have taken a tunnelcar more quickly, but it seemed pleasanter to travel topside. Or maybe I just wanted to put this off a bit. Think about it. Compose myself.
At the entrance to the Govpub warren there was a big director cyb, a plate with a speaker and switch. The sign on it said to switch it on and get close to the speaker and I did.
The cyb's mechanical voice—they never seem to get the "th" sounds right—said, "This is Branch Four of the Office of Government Publications. Say, 'Publications,' and/or, 'Information desired,' as thoroughly and concisely as possible. Use approved voice and standard phraseology."
Well, simple enough so far. I had always rather prided myself on my knack for approved voice, those flat, emotionless tones that indicate efficiency. And I would never forget how to speak Statese. I said,
"Applicant desires all pertinent information relative assignment, change or amendment of State Serial designations, otherwise generally referred to as nomenclature."
There was a second's delay while the audio patterns tripped relays and brought the memory tubes in.
Then the cyb said, "Proceed to Numbering and Identity section. Consult alphabetical list and diagram on your left for location of same."
"Thanks," I said absent-mindedly.
I started to turn away and the cyb said, "Information on tanks is military information and classified. State authorization for—"
I switched it off.
Numbering and Identity wasn't hard to find. I took the shaft to the proper level and then it was only a walk of a few hundred yards through the glowlit corridors.
N. & I. turned out to be a big room, somewhat circular, very high-ceilinged, with banks of cyb controls covering the upper walls. Narrow passageways, like spokes, led off in several directions. There was an information desk in the center of the room.
I looked that way and my heart went into free fall.
There was a girl at the information desk. An exceptionally attractive girl. She was well within the limits of acceptable standard, and her features were even enough, and her hair a middle blonde—but she had something else. Hard to describe. It was a warmth, a buoyancy, a sense of life and intense animation. It didn't exactly show; it radiated. It seemed to sing out from her clear complexion, from her figure, which even a tunic could not hide, from everything about her.
And if I were to state my business, I would have to tell her my name.
I almost backed out right then. I stopped momentarily. And then common sense took hold and I realized that if I were to go through with this thing, here would be only the first of a long series of embarrassments and discomforts. It had to be done.
I walked up to the desk and the girl turned to face me, and I could have sworn that a faint smile crossed her lips. It was swift, like the shadow of a bird across one of the lawns in one of the great parks topside. Very non-standard. Yet I wasn't offended; if anything, I felt suddenly and disturbingly pleased.
"What information is desired?" she asked. Her voice was standard—or was it?
Again I had the feeling of restrained warmth.
I used colloquial. "I want to get the dope on State Serial designations, how they're assigned and so forth. Especially how they might be changed."
She put a handsteno on the desk top and said, "Name? Address? Post?"
I froze. I stood there and stared at her.
She looked up and said, "Well?"
"I—er—no post at present. N/P status."
Her fingers moved on the steno.
I gave her my address and she recorded that.
Then I paused again.
She said, "And your name?"
I took a deep breath and told her.
I didn't want to look into her eyes. I wanted to look away, but I couldn't find a decent excuse to. I saw her eyes become wide and noticed for the first time that they were a warm gray, almost a mouse color. I felt like laughing at that irrelevant observation, but more than that I felt like turning and running. I felt like climbing and dashing all over the walls like a frustrated cat and yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt like anything but standing there and looking stupid, meeting her stare—
She looked down quickly and recorded my name. It took her a little longer than necessary. In that time she recovered. Somewhat.
"All right," she said finally, "I'll make a search."
She turned to a row of buttons on a console in the center of the desk and began to press them in various combinations. A typer clicked away. She tore off a slip of paper, consulted it, and said, "Information desired is in Bank 29. Please follow me."
Well, following her was a pleasure, anyway. I could watch the movement of her hips and torso as she walked. She was not tall, but long-legged and extremely lithe. Graceful and rhythmic. Very, very feminine, almost beyond standard in that respect. I felt blood throb in my temples and was heartily ashamed of myself.
I would like to be in a mating booth with her, I thought, the full authorized twenty minutes. And I knew I was unconformist and the realization hardly scared me at all.
She led me down one of the long passageways.
A few moments later I said, "Don't you sometimes get—well, pretty lonely working here?" Personal talk at a time like this wasn't approved behavior, but I couldn't help it.
She answered hesitantly, but at least she answered. She said, "Not terribly. The cybs are company enough most of the time."
"You don't get many visitors, then."
"Not right here. N. & I. isn't a very popular section. Most people who come to Govpub spend their time researching in the ancient manuscript room. The—er—social habits of the pre-atomic civilization."
I laughed. I knew what she meant, all right. Pre-atomics and their ideas about free mating always fascinated people. I moved up beside her. "What's your name, by the way?"
"L-A-R-A 339/827."
I pronounced it. "Lara. Lah-rah. That's beautiful. Fits you, too."
She didn't answer; she kept her eyes straight ahead and I saw the faint spot of color on her cheek.
I had a sudden impulse to ask her to meet me after hours at one of the rec centers. If it had been my danger alone, I might have, but I couldn't very well ask her to risk discovery of a haphazard, unauthorized arrangement like that and the possibility of going to the psycho-scan.
We came to a turn in the corridor and something happened; I'm not sure just how it happened. I keep telling myself that my movements were not actually deliberate. I was to the right of her. The turn was to the left. She turned quickly, and I didn't, so that I bumped into her, knocking her off balance. I grabbed her to keep her from falling.
For a moment we stood there, face to face, touching each other lightly. I held her by the arms. I felt the primitive warmth of her breath. Our eyes held together ... proton ... electron ... I felt her tremble.
She broke from my grip suddenly and started off again.
After that she was very business-like.
We came finally to the controls of Bank 29 and she stood before them and began to press button combinations. I watched her work; I watched her move. I had almost forgotten why I'd come here. The lights blinked on and off and the typers clacked softly as the machine sorted out information.
She had a long printed sheet from the roll presently. She frowned at it and turned to me. "You can take this along and study it," she said,
"but I'm afraid what you have in mind may be—a little difficult."
She must have guessed what I had in mind. I said, "I didn't think it would be easy."
"It seems that the only agency authorized to change a State Serial under any circumstances is Opsych."
"Opsych?" You can't keep up with all these departments.
"The Office of Psychological Adjustment. They can change you if you go from a lower to higher E.A.C."
"I don't get it, exactly."
As she spoke I had the idea that there was sympathy in her voice. Just an overtone. "Well," she said, "as you know, the post a person is qualified to hold often depends largely on his Emotional Adjustment Category. Now if he improves and passes from, let us say, Grade 3 to Grade 4, he will probably change his place of work. In order to protect him from any associative maladjustments developed under the old E.A.C, he is permitted a new number."
I groaned. "But I'm already in the highest E.A.C.!"
"It looks very uncertain then."
"Sometimes I think I'd be better off in the mines, or on Marscol—or—in the hell of the pre-atomics!"
She looked amused. "What did you say your E.A.C. was?"
"Oh, all right. Sorry." I controlled myself and grinned. "I guess this whole thing has been just a little too much for me. Maybe my E.A.C.'s even gone down."
"That might be your chance then."
"How do you mean?"
"If you could get to the top man in Opsych and demonstrate that your number has inadvertently changed your E.A.C., he might be able to justify a change."
"By the State, he might!" I punched my palm. "Only how do I get to him?"
"I can find his location on the cyb here. Center One, the capital, for a guess. You'll have to get a travel permit to go there, of course. Just a moment."
She worked at the machine again, trying it on general data. The printed slip came out a moment later and she read it to me. Chief, Opsych, was in the capital all right. It didn't give the exact location of his office, but it did tell how to find the underground bay in Center One containing the Opsych offices.
We headed back through the passageway then and she kept well ahead of me. I couldn't keep my eyes from her walk, from the way she walked with everything below her shoulders. My blood was pounding at my temples again.
I tried to keep the conversation going. "Do you think it'll be hard to get a travel permit?"
"Not impossible. My guess is that you'll be at Travbur all day tomorrow, maybe even the next day. But you ought to be able to swing it if you hold out long enough."
I sighed. "I know. It's that way everywhere in Northem. Our motto ought to be, 'Why make it difficult when with just a little more effort you can make it impossible?'"
She started to laugh, and then, as she emerged from the passageway into the big circular room, she cut her laugh short.
A second later, as I came along, I saw why.
There were two Deacons by the central desk. They were burly and had that hard, pinched-face look and wore the usual black belts. Electric clubs hung from the belts. Spidery looking pistols were at their sides.
I didn't know whether these two had heard my crack or not. I know they kept looking at me.
Lara and I crossed the room silently, she back to her desk, I to the exit door. The Deacons' remote, disapproving eyes swung in azimuth, tracking us.
I walked out and wanted to turn and smile at Lara, and get into my smile something of the hope that someday, somewhere, I'd see her again—but of course I didn't dare.
III
I had the usual difficulties at Travbur the next day. I won't go into them, except to say that I was batted from office to office like a ping pong ball, and that, when I finally got my travel permit, I was made to feel that I had stolen an original Picasso from the State Museum.
I made it in a day. Just. I got my permit thirty seconds before closing time. I was to take the jetcopter to Center One at 0700 hours the following morning.
In my living machine that evening, I was much too excited to work at theoretical research as I usually did after a hard day of tramping around. I bathed, I paced a while, I sat and hummed nervously and got up and paced again. I turned on the telepuppets. There was a drama about the space pilots who fly the nonconformist prisoners to the forests and pulp-acetate plants on Mars. Seemed that the Southem political prisoners who are confined to the southern hemisphere of Mars, wanted to attack and conquer the north. The nonconformists, led by our pilot, came through for the State in the end. Corn is thicker than water. Standard.
There were, however, some good stereofilm shots of the limitless forests of Mars, and I wondered what it would be like to live there, in a green, fresh-smelling land. Pleasant, I supposed, if you could put up with the no doubt revolting morality of a prison planet.
And the drama seemed to point out that there was no more security for the nonconformists out there than for us here on Earth. Maybe somewhere in the universe, I thought, there would be peace for men. Somewhere beyond the solar system, perhaps, someday when we had the means to go there....
Yet instinct told me that wasn't the answer, either. I thought of a verse by an ancient pre-atomic poet named Hoffenstein. (People had unwieldy, random combinations of letters for names in those days.) The poem went:
Wherever I go,
I
go too,
And spoil everything.
That was it. The story of mankind.
I turned the glowlight down and lay on the pneumo after a while, but I didn't sleep for a long, long time.
Then, when I did sleep, when I had been sleeping, I heard the voice again. The low, seductive woman's voice—the startling, shocking voice out of my unconscious.
" You have taken the first step ," she said. " You are on your way to freedom. Don't stop now. Don't sink back into the lifelessness of conformity. Go on ... on and on. Keep struggling, for that is the only answer.... "
I didn't exactly talk back, but in the queer way of the dream, I thought objections. I was in my thirties, at the mid-point of my life, and the whole of that life had been spent under the State. I knew no other way to act. Suppressing what little individuality I might have was, for me, a way of survival. I was chockful of prescribed, stereotyped reactions, and I held onto them even when something within me told me what they were. This wasn't easy, this breaking away, not even this slight departure from the secure, camouflaged norm....
" The woman, Lara, attracts you ," said the voice.
I suppose at that point I twitched or rolled in my sleep. Yes, the voice was right, the woman Lara attracted me. So much that I ached with it.
" Take her. Find a way. When you succeed in changing your name, and know that you can do things, then find a way. There will be a way. "
The idea at once thrilled and frightened me.
I woke writhing and in a sweat again.
It was morning.
I dressed and headed for the jetcopter stage and the ship for Center One.
The ship was comfortable and departed on time, a transport with seats for about twenty passengers. I sat near the tail and moodily busied myself watching the gaunt brown earth far below. Between Centers there was mostly desert, only occasional patches of green. Before the atomic decade, I had heard, nearly all the earth was green and teemed with life ... birds, insects, animals, people, too. It was hard rock and sand now, with a few scrubs hanging on for life. The pre-atomics, who hadn't mastered synthesization, would have a hard time scratching existence from the earth today.
I tried to break the sad mood, and started to look around at some of the other passengers. That was when I first noticed the prisoners in the forward seats. Man and woman, they were, a youngish, rather non-descript couple, thin, very quiet. They were manacled and two Deacons sat across from them. The Deacons' backs were turned to me and I could see the prisoners' faces.
They had curious faces. Their eyes were indescribably sad, and yet their lips seemed to be ready to smile at any moment.
They were holding hands, not seeming to care about this vulgar emotional display.
I had the sudden crazy idea that Lara and I were sitting there, holding hands like that, nonconforming in the highest, and that we were wonderfully happy. Our eyes were sad too, but we were really happy, quietly happy, and that was why our lips stayed upon the brink of a smile.
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Who are the members aboard the life skiff with Malcolm?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Wanderers of the Wolf Moon by NELSON S. BOND.
Relevant chunks:
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
Question:
Who are the members aboard the life skiff with Malcolm?
Answer:
|
[
"On life skiff number four, the skiff onto which Gregory Malcolm had evacuated were himself, his employers J. Foster Andrews, the head of the Galactic Metals Corporations, and his family: Andrews’s tall and well-styled wife Enid, his plain-featured, out of shape but beautiful-eyed sister Maud, Maud’s poodle Cuddles, Andrews’s drunk son Bert, Andrews’s beautiful daughter Crystal, and the man to whom Crystal was promised, Ralph Breadon. Malcolm describes Ralph as tall and strong-knit, with tanned skin. Also aboard the skiff were the maid of the Andrews family, ‘Tina Laney, a cabin boy named Tommy O’Doul, and the radio engineer of the Carefree named Hannigan, who is also called Sparks. \n",
"Accompanying Malcolm on the life skiff are Hannigan, also known as Sparks, who is a radio operator, Tommy, a young cabin-boy, Tina, the maid, and the Andrews family and their company. The Andrews family consists of J. Foster Andrews, Malcolm's employer, his wife Enid, his sister Maud, his daughter Crystal, his son Bert, and Crystal's suitor, Ralph Breadon. The Andrews make up the majority of the members on the life skiff, while Malcom, Hannigan, Tommy, and Tina work under them and attempt to evade disaster. ",
"The members that boarded the life skiff with Malcolm are J. Foster Andrews, his wife, their daughter, the maid, Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O’Doul, and a cabin boy, whom Malcolm has no idea where he came from and when. J. Foster Andrews is the employer of people that are working for the Galatic Metals Corporation. His wife is Enid. Their daughter is Crystal, who is engaged to Breadon. Maud, the sister of Andrews is also on board. She and per puppy \"Cuddles\" board the life-skiff together. They were not able to see any other life-skiffs. They are unsure if they did break free of they got caught along with the ship. ",
"Those that were able to make it into the life skiff with Malcolm during the emergency include Andrew, Enid, Crystal, Ralph, Maud, Sparks, Tommy O’Doul, and Bert. Bert is Andrew’s son. Enid is the wife of Andrew. Maud is Andrew’s sister. Crystal is Andrew’s daughter. Ralph is the man Crystal is pledged to. Tommy is a cabin boy. Malcolm is Andrew’s secretary. Sparks Hannigan is a radio operator. Tommy, Malcolm, and Sparks are all employees of Andrews’ family. "
] |
63048
|
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
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Where does the story take place?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Wanderers of the Wolf Moon by NELSON S. BOND.
Relevant chunks:
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
Question:
Where does the story take place?
Answer:
|
[
"\tThe story begins in the control room of J. Foster Andrews’s space yacht the Carefree, and then proceeds to the dining room. Outside of the Carefreem is a dynamic, glittering web of bright violet light, in stark contrast to the typical black of space. \n\tAs the members of the Andrews family and their household staff escape the Carefree onto a life skiff, the setting changes to the atmosphere of the moon Titan. Now free of the vortex which caused the shimmering lights, the space around their skiff is dark. \n\tAfter their uncontrolled descent onto Titan, the passengers of the skiff find themselves at the foot of a ring of shallow mountains, standing on rough soil. The mountains above are green and lush, with periodic caves along their face. In the sky is an image of Saturn, which causes the gravitational pull on the planet to be similar to Earth’s. More broadly, Titan, the moon they are on, is uninhabited and rarely visited. \n",
"The story takes place on the Andrews' family ship. The ship has multiple rooms; Malcolm and Sparks spend their time operating the ship while the Andrews family stays in the dining dome, a much more comfortable and luxurious room. However, once the ship is in distress and close to crashing, everyone on the ship must move to the independent life skiff, a smaller cramped unit. The crew eventually crashes onto the planet Titan, a mountainous, green, cavern-filled planet, though threatening in its uncertainty and lack of colonies. In the atmosphere, Saturn is visible above them, and the gravity is similar to that on Earth.",
"The story first takes place on a ship which has been in a vortex for more than eight hours. It has lost all its radio signals in and out. They are unsure of when they will be toss out, nor the place that they will be tossed out at. Then the readers follow Greg into the dining room where J. Foster Andrews, his family and some others are eating. There he is asked about the communication which he responds with no communication at all. He starts to explain when Hannigan came into the room and tells everyone to get on the life-skiff since the ship is about to crash. Once they get on to the life-skiff, however, because Breadon accidentally hits the control keys with his sleeve, which turns of the motors and they go directly towards the ground. Luckily Breadon is talented and skilled, he is able to perform the miracle that makes the life-skiff bounced and finally landed, without injuring anyone. Even though the life-skiff is a bit broken, it is not too big of a deal. As everyone got off the life-skiff, Breadon calls them together and tells Hannigan to send signals to the nearest space cruiser. Hannigan suggests to him that they aren’t even sure where they are, and the signal system are broken. Then the story ends with Greg telling them that they are on the northern hemisphere of Titan, one of the satellites of Mars. ",
"The story begins on the yacht named Carefree, owned by J. Foster Andrews. The ship is stuck in a typhoon that is causing the ship to be twisted and directed towards an unknown location. Carefree has been caught in the space vortex for hours and the ship ends up in the H-layer of an unknown planet. As the ship is about to crash, a group swarm towards a life skiff. The life skiff is forty feet. The life skiff crash lands on one of the satellites of Saturn, on Titan, in the northern hemisphere. "
] |
63048
|
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
|
What is the relationship between the Andrews family and those in their employ?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Wanderers of the Wolf Moon by NELSON S. BOND.
Relevant chunks:
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
Question:
What is the relationship between the Andrews family and those in their employ?
Answer:
|
[
"Generally, the Andrews family is dismissive of their household staff, which include Gregory Malcolm, ‘Tina Laney, Sparks, and a cabin-boy. J. Foster Andrews, the head of the family, impatiently calls for his secretary, Gregory Malcolm, to complain about the quality of their morning honey. J. Foster learns that Malcolm doesn’t know that state of the Galactic market, but dismisses the reason that Malcolm provides, instead concluding that the radio technician Sparks is drunk. \n\tDuring the evacuation to the life skiff, Crystal Andrews, J. Foster’s daughter, remembers her maid ‘Tina Laney and asks where she is, apparently paying mind to her safety. In contrast, her fiancé Ralph Breadon is dismissive of Malcolm, and later blames him for the life skiff’s crashing into Titan. Upon the cabin-boy’s revelation that it was, in fact, Breadon who inadvertently caused the skiff’s malfunction, Breadon strikes the cabin-boy. \n\tOn Titan, ‘Tina is instructed to remove things from the skiff by the women of the Andrews family, who do not help, and Sparks and Malcolm are harshly instructed to make themselves useful. ",
"The Andrews family resembles a royal one; they are wealthy and own the monopoly of Galactic Metals Corporation, with over ten thousand employees. The Andrews family is aware of their wealth and power, and treat their employees as significantly inferior to them. They also believe that any problems that arise are due to their employers, and insist that their products are perfect enough to not be subject to any problems. This is shown in the story when Malcolm first sees the Andrews family to update them on the situation at hand, and J. Foster Andrews expects his workers to be able to resolve the issue themselves. ",
"The Andrews family seem to have different attitudes towards their employees. Through the first part of the story, we see that at first J. Foster Andrews is not paying much attention to Greg, who is his employee, even when speaking with him. J. Foster Andrews simply replies “fine” to Greg’s answer of no transmission. Then he realizes what Greg is actually saying and then without allowing Greg to explain what he means by no transmission and how it has happened, he continues to scold them and order Greg to do things. Maud Andres tells him to stop and lets Greg explain himself. Greg on the other hand is very polite. He greets the Andrews family when entering the dining room, and thanks Miss Andrews for letting him to explain himself. On the contrary, later in the story, Breadon does not thank Greg even when he complements Breadon, instead, Breadon just accuses him for the crash just because he touched the control. But still, Greg is being very polite and calm, and it is in strong contrast to Breadon’s anger and rudeness. Lastly, in the end, the readers see that Maud Andrews, the sister of J. Foster Andrews, is very surprised when she hears that Greg knows where they are. ",
"J. Foster Andrews employs around ten thousand people for his Galactic Metals Corporation. He is described as Napoleonic, especially when talking towards his employees. He is loud and demanding towards Malcolm and interrupts him many times when he speaks. His sister Maud even remarks that he has to give Malcolm a chance to respond. Maud inquisitively judges Malcolm and the other employees. When the ship is about to crash and everybody is rushing towards the life skiff, the Andrews family has more regard for their pets or fights than for saving others on the ship. \n\nAndrew continuously commands orders from his employees and has no patience for anything but extreme obedience from them. The rest of the family continues to demand the employees take after them once they leave the ship after their crash landing. They are more concerned about their own comfort than the well-being of the employees. Both Ralph and J. Foster take action trying to one-up one another in an attempt to show their power over their employees. Neither wants to be a fool. At the end of the story when Malcolm is able to approximate their location, Maud, a member of the Andrews family, is taken aback by Malcolm's discovery. She reacts as if she is surprised an employee could be smart.\n"
] |
63048
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Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Wanderers of the Wolf Moon by NELSON S. BOND.
Relevant chunks:
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Gregory Malcolm is a secretary to J. Foster Andrews, the wealthy leader of the Galactic Metals Corporation. In the control room of Andrews’s space yacht the Carefree, Sparks, the radioman, fails to downplay the seriousness of their situation to Malcolm: the Carefree has been sucked into an unpredictable vortex and the fate of the ship and its occupants is uncertain. \n\tMalcolm approaches the dining room, where Andrews and members of his family are enjoying breakfast. He is unnoticed by his employers, but takes note of Andrews’s beautiful daughter Crystal and her betrothed Ralph Breadon. Suddenly, Andrews calls Malcolm over to complain about the honey and to enquire about the state of the Galactic market. Malcolm, in virtue of the fact that the vortex has blocked communication to and from the Carefree, is unable to answer. Crystal asks Malcolm if they are in danger, but before he is able to answer the question, Crystal’s older brother Bert enters drunkenly and suggests that they are doomed. \nSparks abruptly enters the room and confirms Bert’s drunken suspicion: they have been caught in a gravitation downdraft and must evacuate to a life skiff. On the skiff with members of the Andrews family, Sparks, a cabin-boy, and Breadon, Malcolm navigates above a celestial body and observes the crash of the Carefree. Just as Malcolm surrenders control of the skiff to Breadon, its engines engage and they quickly fall towards the planet. Breadon deftly manipulates the controls, and they land safely. As Malcolm quickly congratulates Breadon on his landing, the latter blames and berates the secretary for the fall. The cabin-boy, however, points out that Breadon’s sleeve was responsible for their descent. \nMalcolm and Sparks examine the damage to the skiff, and Sparks shares his frustrations about Malcolm’s submissive, secretarial behaviour. Malcolm concludes that they are on a rarely-visited, unpopulated, vast, and dangerous moon of Saturn called Titan. Malcolm resolves not to tell the Andrews, fearing that the information would only make them panic. Meanwhile, the Andrews family are in disarray over how best to remove necessities from the skiff.\nBreadon delegates to Sparks the role of establishing communication. Sparks, however, responds poorly and reveals that they are on Titan, and that their chances of rescue are dim. \n",
"Gregory Malcolm is the secretary of J. Foster Andrews, a wealthy man in charge of the Galactic Metals Corporation. While aboard their ship, Hannigan, a radio operator and companion of Malcolm, discloses that they have entered a vortex and remain trapped with no transmission or radio signal. Hannigan advises that Malcolm doesn't tell the Andrews family and instead waits until there is more information. Malcolm enters the dining dome, where the Andrews family sits, including Crystal, their daughter who Malcolm admires, and Ralph Breadon, her suitor. J. Foster asks Malcolm for information about the corporation's business, to which Malcolm is unable to answer due to the lack of radio transmission. The Andrews family notices the odd situation outside the ship's port and questions Malcolm further, but a drunk Bert Andrews interrupts, panicking and revealing the dire situation at hand. Malcolm reassures the family that there is no immediate danger yet, but Hannigan then enters, urgently yelling at everyone to board the life skiff due to emergency. The team runs to the life skiff, where Malcolm and Hannigan frantically operate it until Breadon insists on taking over. Breadon gains control but the life skiff still faces danger, and as Malcolm and Hannigan scramble over the controls, Breadon steers the life skiff onto the ground; the team survives but the skiff is wrecked. Breadon blames Malcolm for the crash, and Malcolm leaves the situation alone, which Hannigan discourages. After inspection, Malcolm determines that the team has crashed on the planet Titan.",
"The story starts with Hannigan trying to tell Greg that the atmospherics don’t need to be worried, these are not worth reporting to the boss. However, Greg has studied astrogation and is sure that they are in a vortex. He knows that they have been in the vortex for more than eight hours, but he has no idea how much longer nor how far the ship will go. Agreeing not to tell the boss, Greg goes upstairs to the dining room. Right after he arrives by the door, J. Foster Andrews of Galactic Metals Corporation, starts calling him. He comes in and is asked about the transmission, which he says that there is none. Before he has time to finish explaining himself, Bert Andrews, one of J. Foster Andrews’ son, came in and told everyone that they have been in the vortex for a long time, and they could crash at any moment. J. Foster then turns to confirm with Greg, who explains that it is indeed true, only a bit exaggerated. However, Hannigan comes in and rushes everyone to get on Number Four life-skiff. They are about to crash. \n\nThey all rush to the life-skiff. And Breadon, the person that J. Foster Andrew daughter’s engaged to, tries to get the control from Greg. And in the middle of this, someone hit the control-keys and the motor is killed. Then all of a sudden, Greg, Breadon, and Hannigan all try to reach the control. However, in the end, it is the Breadon that performed the miracle in saving all of them. Later Greg and Hannigan goes to check the ship while others are all doing their own things. Looking around, Greg realizes that they are on Titan, one of Saturn’s satellites. Then Breadon orders Hannigan to send an SOS message to the nearest space cruiser. Hannigan asks Breadon, mockingly, what he should use, and if he knows where they are at. Breadon got stuck with so many questions coming at once, then it is Greg who said: they are on the northern hemisphere of the satellite. ",
"The story begins with Sparks and Malcolm discussing their predicament on the ship Carefree. The ship is trapped in a vortex that has blown it off course. Malcolm goes to the rotunda where food is being served to the Andrews family. The Andrews family is surrounding the table, including Crystal, who Malcolm fancies. After some loud talking from the family, eventually, Greg informs them that they are in an ionized field and the transmission does not work. The family becomes quite concerned at the news. The son of Andrews, Bert, walks into the doorway in a drunken manner. He tells everyone that they should be concerned. While Malcolm is trying to calm the family down, Sparks runs into the room yelling at everyone to head towards the life skiff. There is a mad rush towards the life skiff that caused a lot of confusion. The Carefree bursts into flames and Malcolm says that he is unsure if the other skiffs were able to escape in time. \n\nMalcolm is piloting the ship when Breadon commands him to hand over the controls. When he does, Breadon’s sleeve brushes against the control keys causing the motors to be turned off. Many people rush to fix the skiff, but Breadon is ultimately the person who guides the skiff to the ground. Breadon yells at Malcolm for interfering, but the cabin boy, Tommy, defends Malcolm. Breadon continues to belittle Malcolm. Sparks tells Malcolm that he is strange and he needs to defend himself against Breadon. \n\nEveryone disembarks from the ship. Bert tries to give orders, but the orders seem to be nonsensical. Malcolm is the first person to realize where the group has crash-landed. Breadon then commands Sparks to send an SOS message. Sparks mocks him by questioning how he should send a message and where he should say they are located, knowing that Breadon does not have the answer. Breadon is not able to specify exactly where they are located. Malcolm completes an experiment that is able to narrow down which hemisphere of the satellite they are located in, displaying a skill that Breadon does not possess. Maud Andrews is inquisitive of how Malcolm could have possibly been able to know where they crash-landed. \n"
] |
63048
|
Wanderers of the Wolf Moon
By NELSON S. BOND
They were marooned on Titan, their ship wrecked, the radio smashed. Yet they had to exist, had to build a new life on a hostile world. And the man who assumed command was Gregory Malcolm, the bespectacled secretary—whose only adventures had come through the pages of a book.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1944. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Sparks snapped off the switches and followed him to the door of the radio turret. Sparks was a stunted, usually-grinning, little redhead named Hannigan. But he wasn't grinning now. He laid an anxious hand on Greg's arm. "If I was you," he said, "if I was you, Malcolm, I don't think I'd say nothing to the boss about this. Not just yet, anyhow."
Greg said, "Why not?"
Sparks spluttered and fussed and made heavy weather of answering.
"Well, for one thing, it ain't important. It would only worry him. And then there's the womenfolks, they scare easy. Which of course they ain't no cause to. Atmospherics don't mean nothing. I've rode out worse storms than this—plenty of times. And in worse crates than the Carefree ."
Greg studied him carefully from behind trim plasta-rimmed spectacles. He drew a deep breath. He said levelly, "So it's that bad, eh, Sparks?"
"What bad? I just told you—"
"I know. Sparks, I'm not a professional spaceman. But I've studied astrogation as few Earthlubbers have. It's been my hobby for years. And I think I know what we're up against.
"We hit a warp-eddy last night. We've been trapped in a vortex for more than eight hours. Lord only knows how many hundreds of thousands of miles we've been borne off our course. And now we've blasted into a super-ionized belt of atmospherics. Your radio signals are blanketed. You can't get signals in or out. We're a deaf-mute speck of metal being whirled headlong through space. Isn't that it?"
"I don't know what—" began Sparks hotly. Then he stopped, studied his companion thoughtfully, nodded. "O.Q.," he confessed, "that's it. But we ain't licked yet. We got three good men on the bridge. Townsend ... Graves ... Langhorn. They'll pull out of this if anybody can. And they ain't no sense in scaring the Old Man and his family."
"I won't tell them," said Greg. "I won't tell them unless I have to. But between you and me, what are the odds against us, Sparks?"
The radioman shrugged.
"Who knows? Vortices are unpredictable. Maybe the damn thing will toss us out on the very spot it picked us up. Maybe it will give us the old chuckeroo a million miles the other side of Pluto. Maybe it will crack us up on an asteroid or satellite. No way of telling till it happens."
"And the controls?"
"As useless," said Sparks, "as a cow in a cyclone."
"So?"
"We sit tight," said Sparks succinctly, "and hope."
Malcolm nodded quietly. He took off his spectacles, breathed on them, wiped them, replaced them. He was tall and fair; in his neat, crisply pressed business suit he appeared even slimmer than he was. But there was no nervousness in his movements. He moved measuredly. "Well," he said, "that appears to be that. I'm going up to the dining dome."
Sparks stared at him querulously.
"You're a queer duck, Malcolm. I don't think you've got a nerve in your body."
"Nerves are a luxury I can't afford," replied Greg. "If anything happens—and if there's time to do so—let me know." He paused at the door. "Good luck," he said.
"Clear ether!" said Sparks mechanically. He stared after the other man wonderingly for a long moment, then went back to his control banks, shaking his head and muttering.
Gregory Malcolm climbed down the Jacob's-ladder and strode briskly through the labyrinthine corridors that were the entrails of the space yacht Carefree . He paused once to peer through a perilens set into the ship's port plates. It was a weird sight that met his gaze. Not space, ebony-black and bejewelled with a myriad flaming splotches of color; not the old, familiar constellations treading their ever-lasting, inexorable paths about the perimeter of Sol's tiny universe, but a shimmering webwork of light, so tortured-violet that the eyes ached to look upon it. This was the mad typhoon of space-atmospherics through which the Carefree was now being twisted, topsy-turvy, toward a nameless goal.
He moved on, approaching at last the quartzite-paned observation rotunda which was the dining dome of the ship.
His footsteps slowed as he composed himself to face those within. As he hesitated in the dimly-lighted passage, a trick of lights on glass mirrored to him the room beyond. He could see the others while they were as yet unaware of his presence. Their voices reached him clearly.
J. Foster Andrews, his employer and the employer of the ten thousand or more men and women who worked for Galactic Metals Corporation, dominated the head of the table. He was a plump, impatient little Napoleon. Opposite him, calm, graceful, serene, tastefully garbed and elaborately coiffured even here in deep space, three weeks from the nearest beauty shop, sat his wife, Enid.
On Andrews' right sat his sister, Maud. Not young, features plain as a mud fence, but charming despite her age and homeliness simply because of her eyes; puckish, shrewdly intelligent eyes, constantly aglint with suppressed humor at—guessed Greg—the amusing foibles and frailties of those about her.
She gave her breakfast the enthusiastic attention of one too old and shapeless to be concerned with such folderol as calories and dietetics, pausing only from time to time to share smidgeons of food with a watery-eyed scrap of white, curly fluff beside her chair. Her pet poodle, whom she called by the opprobrious title of "Cuddles."
On J. Foster's left sat his daughter, Crystal. She it was who caused Gregory Malcolm's staid, respectable heart to give a little lurch as he glimpsed her reflected vision—all gold and crimson and cream—in the glistening walls. If Crystal was her name, so, too, was crystal her loveliness.
But—Greg shook his head—but she was not for him. She was already pledged to the young man seated beside her. Ralph Breadon. He turned to murmur something to her as Greg watched; Greg saw and admired and disliked his rangy height, his sturdy, well-knit strength, the rich brownness of his skin, his hair, his eyes.
The sound of his own name startled Greg.
"Malcolm!" called the man at the head of the table. "Malcolm! Now where in blazes is he, anyhow?" he demanded of no one in particular, everyone in general. He spooned a dab of liquid gold from a Limoges preserve jar, tongued it suspiciously, frowned. "Bitter!" he complained.
"It's the very best Martian honey," said his wife.
"Drylands clover," added Crystal.
"It's still bitter," said J. Foster petulantly.
His sister sniffed. "Nonsense! It's delightful."
"I say it's bitter," repeated Andrews sulkily. And lifted his voice again. " Malcolm! Where are you?"
"You called me, sir?" said Malcolm, moving into the room. He nodded politely to the others. "Good morning, Mrs. Andrews ... Miss Andrews ... Mr. Breadon...."
"Oh, sit down!" snapped J. Foster. "Sit down here and stop bobbing your head like a teetotum! Had your breakfast? The honey's no good; it's bitter." He glared at his sister challengingly. "Where have you been, anyway? What kind of secretary are you? Have you been up to the radio turret? How's the market today? Is Galactic up or down?"
Malcolm said, "I don't know, sir."
"Fine! Fine!" Andrews rattled on automatically before the words registered. Then he started, his face turning red. "Eh? What's that? Don't know! What do you mean, you don't know? I pay you to—"
"There's no transmission, sir," said Greg quietly.
"No trans—nonsense! Of course there's transmission! I put a million credits into this ship. Finest space-yacht ever built. Latest equipment throughout. Sparks is drunk, that's what you mean! Well, you hop right up there and—"
Maud Andrews put down her fork with a clatter. "Oh, for goodness sakes, Jonathan, shut up and give the boy time to explain! He's standing there with his mouth gaping like a rain-spout, trying to get a word in edgewise! What's the trouble, Gregory?" She turned to Greg, as Jonathan Foster Andrews wheezed into startled silence. " That? "
She glanced at the quartzite dome, beyond which the veil of iridescence wove and cross-wove and shimmered like a pallid aurora.
Greg nodded. "Yes, Miss Andrews."
Enid Andrews spoke languidly from the other end of the table.
"But what is it, Gregory? A local phenomenon?"
"You might call it that," said Greg, selecting his words cautiously.
"It's an ionized field into which we've blasted. It—it—shouldn't stay with us long. But while it persists, our radio will be blanketed out."
Breadon's chestnut head came up suddenly, sharply.
"Ionization! That means atmosphere!"
Greg said, "Yes."
"And an atmosphere means a body in space somewhere near—" Breadon stopped, bit his lip before the appeal in Malcolm's eyes, tried to pass it off easily. "Oh, well—a change of scenery, what?"
But the moment of alarm in his voice had not passed unnoticed. Crystal Andrews spoke for all of them, her voice preternaturally quiet.
"You're hiding something, Malcolm. What is it? Is there—danger?"
But Greg didn't have to answer that question. From the doorway a harsh, defiantly strident voice answered for him. The voice of Bert Andrews, Crystal's older brother.
"Danger? You're damn right there's danger! What's the matter with you folks—are you all deaf, dumb and blind? We've been caught in a space-vortex for hours. Now we're in the H-layer of a planet we can't even see—and in fifteen minutes or fifteen seconds we may all be smashed as flat as pancakes!"
The proclamation brought them out of their chairs. Greg's heart sank; his vain plea, "Mr. Andrews—" was lost in the medley of Crystal's sudden gasp, Enid Andrews' short, choking scream, J. Foster's bellowing roar at his only son.
"Bert—you're drunk!"
Bert weaved precariously from the doorway, laughed in his father's face.
"Sure I'm drunk! Why not? If you're smart you'll get drunk, too. The whole damn lot of you!" He flicked a derisive hand toward Greg. "You too, Boy Scout! What were you trying to do—hide the bad news from them? Well, it's no use. Everybody might as well know the worst. We're gone gooses ... geeses ... aw, what the hell! Dead ducks!" He fell into a chair, sprawled there laughing mirthlessly with fear riding the too-high notes of his laughter.
J. Foster turned to his secretary slowly. His ire had faded; there was only deep concern in his voice.
"Is he telling the truth, Malcolm?"
Greg said soberly, "Partly, sir. He's overstating the danger—but there is danger. We are caught in a space-vortex, and as Mr. Breadon realized, the presence of these ionics means we're in the Heaviside-layer of some heavenly body. But we may not crack up."
Maud Andrews glanced at him shrewdly.
"Is there anything we can do?"
"Not a thing. The officers on the bridge are doing everything possible."
"In that case," said the older woman, "we might as well finish our breakfast. Here, Cuddles! Come to momsy!" She sat down again. Greg looked at her admiringly. Ralph Breadon stroked his brown jaw. He said,
"The life-skiffs?"
"A last resort," said Greg. "Sparks promised he'd let me know if it were necessary. We'll hope it's not—"
But it was a vain hope, vainly spoken in the last, vain moment. For even as he phrased the hopeful words, came the sound of swift, racing footsteps up the corridor. Into the dining dome burst Hannigan, eyes hot with excitement. And his cry dispelled Greg's final hopes for safety.
"Everybody—the Number Four life-skiff— quick ! We've been caught in a grav-drag and we're going to crash!"
II
Those next hectic moments were never afterward very clear in Greg Malcolm's memory. He had a confused recollection of hearing Sparks' warning punctuated by a loud, shrill scream which he vaguely identified as emanating from Mrs. Andrews' throat ... he was conscious of feeling, suddenly, beneath his feet the sickening, quickening lurch of a ship out of control, gripped by gravitational forces beyond its power to allay ... he recalled his own voice dinning in his ears as, incredibly, with Sparks, he took command of the hasty flight from the dining dome down the corridor to the aft ramp, up the ramp, across girdered beams in the super-structure to the small, independently motored rocket-skiff cradled there.
He was aware, too, of strangely disconnected incidents happening around him, he being a part of them but seeming to be only a disinterested spectator to their strangeness. Of his forcing Maud Andrews toward the door of the dome ... of her pushing back against him with all the weight of her body ... of her irate voice, "Cuddles! I forgot him!" Then the shrill excited yapping of the poodle cradled against her as they charged on down the corridor.
J. Foster waddling beside him, tugging at his arm, panting, "The officers?" and his own unfelt assurance. "They can take care of themselves. It's a general 'bandon ship." Enid Andrews stumbling over the hem of a filmy peignoir ... himself bending to lift her boldly and bodily, sweating palms feeling the warm animal heat of her excited body hot beneath them ... Crystal Andrews stopping suddenly, crying,
"'Tina!" ... and Hannigan's reply, "Your maid? I woke her. She's in the life-skiff." Bert Andrews stopping suddenly, being sick in the middle of the corridor, his drunkenness losing itself in the thick, sure nausea of the ever-increasing unsteadiness beneath their feet.
Then the life-skiff, the clang of metal as Hannigan slammed the port behind the last of them, the fumbling for a lock-stud, the quick, grateful pant of the miniature hypos, and a weird feeling of weightlessness, rushingness, hurtlingness as his eardrums throbbed and his mouth tasted brassy and bloody with the fierce velocity of their escape.
Sense and meaning returned only when all this ended. As one waking from a nightmare dream, Greg Malcolm returned to a world he could recognize. A tiny world, encased within the walls of a forty-foot life-skiff. A world peopled too scantily. Andrews, his wife and sister, his son and daughter; 'Tina Laney, the maid; Breadon, Hannigan, young Tommy O'Doul, the cabin-boy (though where he had come from, or when, Greg did not know). And himself. In a life-skiff. In space.
Somewhere in space. He looked through the perilens . What he saw then he might better never have seen. For that shimmering pink-ochre veil had wisped away, now, and in the clean, cold, bitter-clear light of a distant sun he watched the death-dive of the yacht Carefree .
Like a vast silver top, spinning heedlessly, wildly, it streaked toward a mottled gray and green, brown and dun, hard and crushing-brutal terrain below. Still at its helm stood someone, for even in that last dreadful moment burst from its nose-jets a ruddy mushroom of flame that tried to, but could not, brake the dizzy fall.
For an instant Greg's eyes, stingingly blinded and wet, thought they glimpsed a wee black mote dancing from the bowels of the Carefree ; a mote that might be another skiff like their own. But he could not be sure, and then the Carefree was accelerating with such violence and speed that the eye could see it only as a flaming silver lance against the ugly earth-carcase beneath, and then it struck and a carmine bud of flame burst and flowered for an instant, and that was all....
And Greg Malcolm turned from the perilens , shaken.
Hannigan said, "It's over?" and Greg nodded.
Hannigan said, "The other skiffs? Did they break free, or were they caught?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see for sure."
"You must have seen. Are we the only ones?"
"I couldn't see for sure. Maybe. Maybe not."
Then a body scrambled forward, pressing through the tightness of other huddled bodies, and there was a hand upon his elbow. "I'll take over now, Malcolm."
It was Ralph Breadon. Gregory looked at him slowly, uncomprehendingly at first. His hand was reluctant to leave the guiding-gear of the small ship which was, now, all that remained to them of civilization and civilization's wondrous accomplishments. He had not realized until this moment that for a while ... for a short, eager, pulse-quickening while ... on his alertness, in his hands, had depended the destinies of ten men and women. But he knew, suddenly and completely, that it was for this single moment his whole lifetime had waited. It was for this brief moment of command that some intuition, some instinct greater than knowledge, had prepared him. This was why he, an Earthlubber, had studied astrogation, made a hobby of the empire of the stars. That he might be fitted to command when all others failed. And now—
And now the moment was past, and he was once again Gregory Malcolm, mild, lean, pale, bespectacled secretary to J. Foster Andrews. And the man at his side was Ralph Breadon, socialite and gentleman sportsman, trained pilot. And in Malcolm the habit of obedience was strong....
"Very well, sir," he said. And he turned over the controls.
What happened then was unfortunate. It might just as well have happened to Malcolm, though afterward no one could ever say with certainty. However that was, either by carelessness or malfortune or inefficiency, once-thwarted disaster struck again at the little party on the life-skiff. At the instant Breadon's hand seized the controls the skiff jerked suddenly as though struck with a ponderous fist, its throbbing motors choked and snarled in a high, rising crescendo of torment that lost itself in supersonic heights, and the ship that had been drifting easily and under control to the planet beneath now dipped viciously.
The misfortune was that too many huddled in the tiny space understood the operation of the life-skiff, and what must be done instantly. And that neither pilot was as yet in control of the ship. Breadon's hand leaped for the Dixie rod, so, too, did Malcolm's—and across both their bodies came the arm of Sparks Hannigan, searching the controls.
In the scramble someone's sleeve brushed the banks of control-keys. The motors, killed, soughed into silence. The ship rocked into a spin. Greg cried out, his voice a strange harshness in his ears; Breadon cursed; one of the women bleated fearfully.
Then Breadon, still cursing, fought all hands from the controls but his own. And the man was not without courage. For all could see plainly, in the illumined perilens , how near to swift death that moment of uncertainty had led them. The skiff, which an instant before had been high in the stratosphere of this unknown planet ... or satellite or whatever it might be ... was now flashing toward hard ground at lightning speed.
Only a miracle, Greg knew, could save them now. An impulse spun his head, he looked at Crystal Andrews. There was no fear in her eyes. Just a hotness and an inexplicable anger. Beside her was the other girl, the maid, 'Tina; she was frankly afraid. Her teeth were clenched in her nether lip, and her eyes were wide and anxious, but she did not cry out.
Only a miracle could save them now. But Breadon's hands performed that miracle; his quick, nerveless, trained hands. A stud here ... a lever there ... a swift wrenching toss of the shoulders. His face twisted back over his shoulder, and his straining lips pulled taut and bloodless away from his teeth. "Hold tight, folks! We're going to bounce—"
Then they struck!
But they struck glancingly, as Breadon had hoped, and planned for, and gambled on. They struck and bounced. The frail craft shivered and groaned in metal agony, jarred across harsh soil, bounced again, settled, nosed over and rocked to a standstill. Somewhere forward something snapped with a shrill, high ping! of stress; somewhere aft was the metallic flap-clanging of broken gear trailing behind them. But they were safe.
Breath, held so long that he could not remember its inhalation, escaped Greg's lungs in a long sigh. "Nice work, Mr. Breadon!" he cried. "Oh, nice work!"
But surprisingly, savagely, Breadon turned on him.
"It would have been better work, Malcolm, if you'd kept your damned hands off the controls! Now see what you've done? Smashed up our skiff! Our only—"
"He didn't do it!" piped the shrill voice of Tommy O'Doul. "You done it yourself, Mr. Breadon. Your sleeve. It caught the switch."
"Quiet!" Breadon, cheeks flushed, reached out smartly, stilled the youngster's defense with a swift, ungentle slap. "And you, Malcolm—after this, do as you're told, and don't try to assume responsibilities too great for you. All right, everybody. Let's get out and see how bad the damage is."
Instinctively Greg had surged a half step forward as Breadon silenced the cabin boy. Now old habit and common-sense halted him. He's overwrought, he reasoned. We're all excited and on edge. We've been to Bedlam. Our nerves are shot. In a little while we'll all be back to normal.
He said quietly, "Very well, Mr. Breadon." And he climbed from the broken skiff.
Hannigan said, "Looks bad, don't it?"
"Very," said Malcolm. He fingered a shard of loose metal flapping like a fin from the stern of the skiff. "Not hopeless, though. There should be an acetylene torch in the tool locker. With that—"
"You ought to of poked him," said Hannigan.
"What? Oh, you mean—?"
"Yeah. The kid was right, you know. He done it."
"His sleeve, you mean. Well, it was an accident," said Greg. "It could have happened to anyone. And he made a good landing. Considering everything. Anyhow—" Again he was Gregory Malcolm, serious-faced, efficient secretary. "Anyhow, we have been thrust into an extremely precarious circumstance. It would be silly to take umbrage at a man's nervous anger. We must have no quarreling, no bickering—"
"Umbrage!" snorted Sparks. "Bickering! They're big words. I ain't sure I know what they mean. I ain't exactly sure they mean anything ." He glanced at Greg oddly. "You're a queer jasper, Malcolm. Back there on the ship, I figured you for a sort of a stuffed-shirt. Yes-man to the boss. And then in the show-down, you come through like a movie hero—for a little while. Then you let that Breadon guy give you the spur without a squawk—"
Malcolm adjusted his plasta-rimmed spectacles. He said, almost stubbornly, "Our situation is grave. There must be no bickering."
"Bickering your Aunt Jenny! What do you call that?"
Sparks jerked a contemptuous thumb toward the group from which they were separated. Upon disembarking, only Greg and Sparks had moved to make a careful examination of their damaged craft. The others, more or less under the direction of Breadon, were making gestures toward removing certain necessaries from the skiff. Their efforts, slight and uncertain as they were, had already embroiled them in argument.
The gist of their argument, so far as Greg Malcolm could determine, was that everyone wanted "something" to be done, but no two could agree as to just what that something was, and no one seemed to have any bursting desire to participate in actual physical labor.
J. Foster Andrews, all traces of his former panic and confusion fled, was planted firmly, Napoleonically, some few yards from the open port of the life-skiff, barking impatient orders at little Tommy O'Doul who—as Greg watched—stumbled from the port bearing a huge armload of edibles.
'Tina, the maid, was in a frenzy of motion, trying to administer to the complaints and demands of Mrs. Andrews (whose immaculate hair-do had suffered in the frenetic minutes of their flight) and Crystal Andrews
(who knew perfectly well there were sweaters in the life-skiff) and Miss Maud (who wanted a can of prepared dog-food and a can-opener immediately, and look at poor Cuddles, momsy's 'ittle pet was so hungry)!
Bert Andrews was sulkily insisting that it was nonsense to leave the warmth and security of the skiff anyway, and he wished he had a drink, while the harassed, self-appointed commander of the refugee corps was shouting at whomever happened, at any given moment, to capture his divided and completely frantic attention. His orders were masterpieces of confusion, developing around one premise that the castaway crew should immediately set up a camp. Where, how, or with what nonexistent equipment, Breadon did not venture to say.
"You see what I mean?" demanded Sparks disgustedly.
Greg Malcolm saw. He also saw other things. That their landing-spot, while excellent for its purpose, was not by any manner of means an ideal campsite. It was a small, flat basin of sandy soil, rimmed by shallow mountains. His gaze sought these hills, looked approvingly on their greenness, upon the multitude of dark pock-marks dotting them. These caves, were they not the habitations of potential enemies, might well become the sanctuaries of spacewrecked men.
He saw, also, a thin ribbon of silver sheering the face of the northern hills. His gaze, rising still skyward, saw other things—
He nodded. He knew, now, where they were. Or approximately. There was but one planet in the solar system which boasted such a phenomenon. The apparent distance of the Sun, judged by its diminished disc, argued his judgment to be correct. The fact that they had surged through an atmospheric belt for some length of time before finally meeting with disaster.
"Titan," he said. "Hyperion possibly. But probably Titan."
Sparks' gaze, following Greg's upward, contracted in an expression of dismay.
"Dirty cow! You mean that's where we are?"
"I believe so. There's Saturn, our mother planet, looming above us as large as a dinner plate. And the grav-drag here is almost Earth norm. Titan has a 3,000 mile diameter. That, combined with the Saturnian tractile constant, would give us a strong pull."
Sparks wailed, "But Titan! Great morning, Malcolm, nobody ever comes to Titan! There ain't no mines here, no colonies, no—" He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening yet farther. "And, hey—this place is dangerous ! There are—"
"I know it," said Greg swiftly, quietly. "Shut up, Sparks. No use telling the others. If they don't guess it themselves, what they don't know won't alarm them. We've got to do something, though. Get ourselves organized into a defensive community. That's the only way—"
Ralph Breadon's sharp, dictatorial voice interrupted him. "Well, Malcolm, stop soldiering and make yourself useful!"
And J. Foster, not to have his authority usurped, supplemented the order. "Yes, Malcolm, let's get going! No time for day-dreaming, my man. We want action!"
Sparks said, "Maybe you'll get it now, fatty!" under his breath, and looked at Malcolm hopefully. But his companion merely nodded, moved forward toward the others, quietly obedient to the command.
"Yes, sir," he said.
Hannigan groaned and followed him.
III
Breadon said, "All right, Tommy, dump them here. I have a few words to say." He glanced about him pompously. "Now, folks, naturally we want to get away from here as soon as possible. Therefore I delegate you, Sparks, to immediately get a message off. An SOS to the nearest space cruiser."
Hannigan grinned. It was not a pleasant grin. He took his time answering. He spat thoughtfully on the ground before him, lifted his head. He said, "A message, huh?"
"That's what I said."
"And what'll I send it with?" drawled Sparks. "Tom-toms?"
Breadon flushed darkly.
"I believe the life-skiff was equipped with a radio? And theoretically you are a radio operator?"
"Finest radio money can buy!" interpolated J. Foster Andrews proudly.
"Put a million credits into the Carefree . Best equipment throughout."
Sparks looked from one to another of them, grinned insolently. "You're both right. I am a radio operator, and there was a radio. But we crashed, remember? On account of some dope's sleeve got caught in the master switch—"
"That will do!" snapped Breadon angrily. He stared at the bandy-legged little redhead. "You mean the radio was broken?"
"It wasn't helped none. The tubes was made out of glass, and glass don't bounce so good."
Greg Malcolm said thoughtfully, "Sparks, can't you fix it?"
"Well, mebbe. But not in five minutes. Maybe not in five years. I won't know till I get going on it."
Breadon frowned.
"I'll handle this, Malcolm," he crisped. Again to the radioman, "Well, you get to work on it immediately. And as soon as you get it fixed, send out an SOS advising the patrol where we are—"
"Speaking of which," insinuated Sparks, "where are we?"
Breadon glared at him wrathfully.
"Why—why on one of the satellites of Saturn, of course. Any fool can see that!"
"O.Q. But does any fool know which one? Or shall I tell you it's Titan? And when you know that, then what? Titan wasn't named that on account of it was a pimple. It's a big place. What'll I tell the Patrol? SOS. Stranded in the middle of we-don't-know-where, somewhere on Titan, maybe. They'll be hunting for us till we've got whiskers down to our knees."
Breadon's irate look vanished. He looked stricken. He said, "I—I don't know. We have a compass—"
Once again it was Gregory Malcolm who entered into the conversation. He had been toying, almost absentmindedly, with a funnel taken from the skiff's stores. Into this he had poured a small portion of water; his right forefinger was pressed to the bottom of the tube, closing it. He said, "I can answer part of that question now. Enough to cut the search in half, anyway. We're in the northern hemisphere of the satellite."
Maud Andrews looked at him sharply as if noticing him for the first time in her life.
"How," she asked, "did you know that, Malcolm?"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Delay in Transit by F. L. (Floyd L.) Wallace.
Relevant chunks:
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Denton Cassal is a sales engineer of Neuronics, Inc., from Earth. On a business trip to Tunney 21, he awaits his next ship on the planet of Godolph. One evening, Cassal is warned by Dimanche, an informative electronic companion, that he is being stalked by a man. The man's motives are not completely known, but according to Dimanche, the man is intending to murder Cassal. One thing is known, which is that the man's objective is related to Cassal being stranded on Godolph. As it begins to rain heavily, Cassal attempts to evade the man with the help of Dimanche; he follows a Godolphian girl and turns into an alleyway. As they pass by the man, Dimanche notes that he is becoming increasingly suspicious. Cassal leads the man into an alleyway, and as the dusk turns to darkness, Dimanche assists him in dodging and fighting the man. With a lighter-turned-knife, Cassal is able to attack the man and stab him several times. According to Dimanche, the man is presumed dead, although moments later the man strangles Cassal and steals his wallet. The next day, Cassal visits the Travelers Aid Bureau, where Murra Foray, the First Counselor, prods him for information, including why he is on his way to Tunney 21. Avoiding the question, Cassal asks about the status of the next ship to Tunney 21. He learns that the ship departed from Godolph that morning, and that someone named Denton Cassal did board it; he then realizes that the man who attacked him the night before used the identification from his wallet to board that ship. Stranded and uncertain of how long he would have to wait for another ship, Cassal is out of options. He contributes a donation to the bureau as he leaves. Dimanche reports that he tried to gather information on Foray, but only got her home planet, as electronic guards were blocking the rest of the information, which Dimanche finds suspicious. On his way out of the agency, Cassal encounters a man that works for Traveler's Aid, but flees after being asked about Murra Foray. Cassal continues on as he remains stranded on Godolph. ",
"The story begins with Cassal concerned about someone following him. His electronic device alerts him that there is potential danger and directs him to walk down an alley. Cassal acknowledges that an alley is not the best choice to walk down if he is concerned about his safety. The person who was following him attacks him. Cassal is able to fend him off but his wallet is stolen. \n\nCassal begins to grow impatient because his ship has not arrived in weeks. He walks towards the Travel Agency Bureau to get counseling advice for his plan to go to Tunney 21. Marra talks about how unlikely it will be that he gets to planet Tunney 21. The ship that he was meant to be on, he did not make because he did not know when it would arrive. Marra tells him that there might not be another ship headed towards Tunney 21 for another 5 years. Even then, Cassal would not be able to board the ship without identification as the region Tunney 21 requires everyone who steps off the ship to present identification. Cassal becomes upset at this news and realizes why the man had attacked him – the man wanted Casals’s identification. Marra agrees to help Cassal for a price and Cassal agrees to the deal.\n\nWhen Cassal leaves the building, he asks an old man about his boss, Marra. The man becomes scared and does not answer Cassal, instead, he walks away. Cassal finds the old man’s behavior curious. \n",
"Denton Cassal is a sales engineer who was selected to see a man at Tunney 21. The story starts with Dimanche talking to Cassel where Dimanche is warning him that there could be a stalker who is harmful to him. After further analysis, Dimanche believed that the guy stalking him had murder in mind. Dimanche is a device that is designed on Earth and it’s able to analyze people. Then the readers learn that Cassal is on Godolph, a transfer center for the stars that are located near the center of the Galaxy. And Cassel is here to transfer from Earth to Tunney 21. He was supposed to get on the ship after a few days of landing in Godolph, but apparently the ship has not arrived and it has been almost three weeks. Hearing Dimanche’s analysis on the man’s connection to the delay, Cassal gets curious. \n\nThen Cassal is suggested by Dimanche to follow a girl in order to get closer to the stalker. Then he gets to a deserted intersection holding his cigarette so that the guy will follow, which he does. Because Godolphian won’t be seen when it’s dark, but they can see Cassal very well, so Dimanche becomes Cassal’s eyes once they entered the intersection. Cassal listens to him and follows his instructions. Luckily he is able to get the distance correct to injure the guy. Right after that, to Cassal’s surprise, Dimanche detects no heartbeat and the guy is not breathing anymore. Despite that he is horrified by the fact he has just murdered someone, Cassal wants to figure out who wants the man to attack him. So he looks through the man’s wallet and other personal items, but could find no connection. Then suddenly the supposed-to-be-dead man attacks Cassal and then runs away with his wallet. \n\nLater, Cassal found himself inside the travelers aid bureau answering questions in order to get a consultation. During the consultation, he realizes that he just missed the ship. Moreover, someone used his identity to get on to that ship. Then, Murra Foray, the first counselor of the travelers aid bureau offers him help if he donates to them. He is surprised by the amount they wish for, but he donates anyways. Then after he exits from the other side of the building, he sees a man who finishes with putting up the signs. But somehow he would not talk about Murra Foray as if he is afraid of her, which Cassal does not understand at all. ",
"On the planet Godolph, Neronics, Inc., salesman Denton Cassal is being stalked by a mysterious local. An intelligent implanted machine able to detect and interpret physiological data of nearby individuals, which Cassal calls Dimanche, tells him that the man likely intends to murder him. Dimanche gathers that the assassin's motivation is connected to Cassal’s being stranded on Godolph; Cassal had initially meant to stay in Godolph for only a couple days before continuing his journey to Tunney 21, but has been stuck there for several weeks. \nCassal moves closer to the man in order for Dimanche to better analyze him; Dimanche reveals that the man wields a concealed knife. Instructing Cassal to turn into an alley, Dimanche learns that the man expressed regret about having to kill Cassal, saying that one of them had to die. Suddenly, the assailant rushes Cassal, who narrowly dodges and deploys a hidden blade. Dimanche guides Cassal, whose eyes are unable to see in the dim Godolphian light, in a fight against the man, and Cassal seemingly dispatches the man. However, he quickly recovers and tackles Cassal, managing to steal his wallet and identification tab before running off. \n\tNow at the Travelers Aid Bureau, where an old technician is changing signs throughout the building, Cassal waits to enter a counseling room to ask about his onward journey to Tunney 21. Through a screen, he speaks with Murra Foray, who asks that he complete an onboarding questionnaire. He answers all the required questions, except for one which asks for his purpose in traveling to Tunney. We learn that Cassal aims to persuade a Tunnesian scientist to come to Earth in order to develop instantaneous radio, which would make them very wealthy. \n\tMurra reveals that the transport for which Cassal had been waiting had departed that morning, and that a man named Denton Cassal had been aboard it. Cassal concludes that his assailant from the previous night had stolen his identification tab with the intention of traveling to Tunney 21. Murra understands Cassal’s situation, and elicits a contribution from him in exchange for the Travelers Aid Bureau’s assistance. Throughout their conversation, Murra seems to bait Cassal into revealing his secret to success as a salesman; because of his possession of Dimanche, Cassal is able to successfully interpret his customers’ reactions. However, Cassal is wary of Murra’s line of questioning and reveals nothing. \n\tAs Cassal leaves the counseling room, he runs into the old man changing the signs, who reveals that Murra has recently assumed control of the Bureau. Cassal sees that the technician is afraid of Murra, but thinks nothing of it.\n"
] |
50998
|
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
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Why is Cassal on his way to Tunney 21?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Delay in Transit by F. L. (Floyd L.) Wallace.
Relevant chunks:
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
Question:
Why is Cassal on his way to Tunney 21?
Answer:
|
[
"Cassal is sent on a business trip by Neuronics, Inc., to visit Tunney 21 to see a man. Tunney 21, according to the first counselor, is home to some of the galaxy's most genius scientists. It is later revealed that Neuronics, Inc. wants that man on their staff back on Earth. The man would work towards the company's goal of developing instantaneous radio; this radio system would impact the entire galaxy, technology that could share information with every planet with no time delay. This radio would dominate means of transportation, communications, and commerce. For these reasons, Cassal is not eager to disclose his plans for going to Tunney 21.",
"Denton Cassal was selected to make the journey to Tunney 21 because he is the best sales engineer at Neuronics, Inc. He is secretive about why he wants to go to Tunney 21. He reveals that he wants to go to Tunney 21 to find a research worker that could help Neuronics perfect their instantaneous radio. If he were able to convince the researcher to go to Earth and work on the radio, he would get a share of the profits. An instantaneous radio would be invaluable throughout the galaxy, the profits for both Neuronics and him would be large. ",
"Cassal is a sales engineer back on Earth where he did very good since he matched very well to his instrument. Thus he was selected to go on a trip to see a man. Since this man is at Tunney 21, Cassal has to travel all the way from Earth to Tunney 21. Tunney 21 has great scientists and especially the one that works on Neuronics. If Earth can get his help, then Earth will have perfect instantaneous radio that span the whole Galaxy. Because of its monopoly in instantaneousness and vastness, Earth can literally set its own price. Thus, for this trip to Tunney 21, with the help of Dimanche, Cassal needs to persuade the researcher to come with him to Earth. This way he can also gain profit from the instantaneous radio which will be build afterward.",
"Cassal is on his way to Tunney 21 in order to convince a Tunnesian scientist to join his company, Neuronics. From the pieces of the scientist’s research that had reached Earth, it was concluded that he would be instrumental in perfecting instantaneous radio, a technology which would revolutionize communication in the galaxy. Neuronics aims to monopolize the technology and amass great wealth, from which Cassal would receive a commission.\nCassal, because of his possession of Dimanche, an intelligent implant capable of determining the thoughts of those nearby, is in a good position to negotiate terms with the scientist for two reasons: firstly because he will be able to guess the Tunnesian’s price, and secondly because Dimanche’s sophisticated technology will convince him that Earth is an advanced civilization.\n"
] |
50998
|
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Delay in Transit by F. L. (Floyd L.) Wallace.
Relevant chunks:
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
|
[
"The story takes place in a city on Godolph, a planet that acts as a transfer location in between stars. Godolph is a threatening and violent city, not safe for ordinary humans. A unique feature of Godolph is that its environment is specifically catered to natives, where the weather is controlled, often with heavy rain. The city is compared to Venice, where water is used as a mode of transport and essential to engineering. Additionally, at dusk the city becomes dark for travelers, but bright for its natives. ",
"The story is set on Godolph, in a Godolphian city. Violence occurs in these cities and they typically shut down at dusk. Being a human pedestrian at night is not a safe option. Cassal is on Godolph as it is in between Earth, which he left, and Tunney 21, where he intends to go. He describes Godolph as a backwards planet. As Cassal is walking on the street, there is a tide of water that is used by Godolphian’s as a transportation network. He is walking in the rain as that is the type of weather preferred by Godolphian’s. \n\nCassal heads down an alley at the direction of Dimanche. The alley is narrow and dark with a slow-moving, oily type of water jutting from one side and large walls standing overhead on the other side. \n\nEventually, Cassal finds himself at the Travelers Aid Bureau. The building is shaped like a square block. The Bureau was similar to a maze inside with many small counseling rooms. A\n\nCassal is only 1/3 of the distance to Tunnel 21. \n",
"The story is set at the place called Godolph. Godolph is the place that travelers transfer from a star that is located further from the Galaxy to the stars that are located near the center of the Galaxy. The story follows Cassal as he walk to the deserted intersection to fight with the guy since Dimanche suggests that there is a connection between him and the delay in his ship. After fighting with the guy, he gets the guys wallet but loses his. Without his identification, he comes to the travelers aid bureau. Here he has to answer questions in order to get a consultation. And during the consultation he learns about missing the ship and about someone who boarded the ship using his identity. Then the story ends with him walking out of the bureau building and asking an old man about Murra Foray, but apparently he is too afraid to answer him. ",
"The first scene of the story takes place on the poorly illuminated streets of the planet Godolph. The natives of the planet have sensitive eyes, and as a result the streets appear dimly lit for human eyes. It rains often on Godolph, whose climate is controlled by its amphibian inhabitants who are fond of rain. A means of transportation on Godolph is the transport tide, rapidly moving water which carries Godolphian natives to their destination quickly and quietly. In the scene where Cassal is confronted by an assailant, there is oily water moving on one side of a narrow alley, and high walls on the opposite side. \n\tThe second half of the story is set in the labyrinthine Travelers Aid Bureau, whose busy corridors are pocketed with small counseling rooms. In each counseling room is a small door into which visitors can deposit contributions to the agency. \n"
] |
50998
|
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
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Who is Dimanche, and how is he used in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Delay in Transit by F. L. (Floyd L.) Wallace.
Relevant chunks:
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
Question:
Who is Dimanche, and how is he used in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Dimanche is a device attached to Cassal's ear that is able to collect physiological data on a person, including nervous systems and physical reactions to stimuli. In addition, Dimanche is able to understand what people \"subvocalize\", or think to themselves in their subconscious. In the story, Dimanche's abilities are shown when he is able to read the thoughts of Cassal's attacker as well as his body's reactions to Cassal's movements, such as his heart rate and blood pressure. Dimanche's features also give Cassal an advantage in his work as a salesperson, as he is able to gauge people's thoughts, motives, and desires. Dimanche is a secret kept from the rest of the galaxy, and Cassal is hesitant to tell others about his abilities.",
"Dimanche is an electronic instrument that was invented on Earth. Cassal refers to Dimanche as a device. It is a secret instrument that very few know about. It has the ability to scan the nervous systems of individuals at short distances to collect and interpret data. He is used in the story to analyze the data that he collects from people nearby to complete a report of what a person says and thinks inside of their head. ",
"Dimanche is a device invented on Earth to help Cassal analyze people. Dimanche is first used to help Cassel notice a man that is stalking him, Dimanche gives his analysis and interpretations about that man, confirming his intention. Dimanche believes that there is some connection between the delay in the transit ship to Tunney 21 and the stalker. So Cassal decides to let the guy find him and see what he is trying to do. When the guy tries to hurt Cassal, Dimanche helps him to fight the man since Cassal cannot see the guy after dark. With Dimanche’s information, Cassal is able to stab the guy. Then he realizes that he has accidentally killed him after Dimanche found no heartbeat and he is not breathing. But neither Dimanche nor Cassal is aware of their ability to pretend to be dead. So before Cassal could react to Dimanche’s warning, he gets hit and his wallet is stolen by the guy. \n\nLater at the travelers aid bureau, we learn that Dimanche is quite crucial to bring the researcher back to Earth. Moreover, Dimanche thought there’s something weird about the Murra Foray, the first counselor of the travelers aid bureau, but he could not identify anything else before the electric guards slide into place. ",
"Dimanche is a device implanted next to the bone behind Denton Cassal’s ear which is able to detect various things about people in proximity to him. Among these things are heart rate, neural index, mental state, and motivation. An intelligent machine, Dimanche is also able to determine any concealed weapons, and can silently communicate with Cassal. Dimanche is an example of the advanced technology of Earth, and Cassal hopes to demonstrate it to a scientist on Tunney 21 to convince him to join Neuronics Inc., in developing instantaneous radio. \n\tCassal employs Dimanche’s capabilities several times throughout the story, often without giving explicit instructions. It is first employed in assessing the mental states and likely motivations of Cassal’s assailant. Dimanche is able to locate the assailant when Cassal’s eyes, in virtue of the poor lighting, could not, and is able to communicate his location to Cassal. Later, Dimanche is used in the Traveler’s Aid Bureau to gather information about Murra Fora, but, as it reaches her, electronic guards prevent it from gathering any information other than her planet of origin. \n"
] |
50998
|
DELAY IN TRANSIT
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by SIBLEY
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
An unprovoked, meaningless night attack is terrifying enough on your own home planet, worse on a world across the Galaxy. But the horror is the offer of help that cannot be accepted!
"Muscles tense," said Dimanche. "Neural index 1.76, unusually high. Adrenalin squirting through his system. In effect, he's stalking you. Intent: probably assault with a deadly weapon."
"Not interested," said Cassal firmly, his subvocalization inaudible to anyone but Dimanche. "I'm not the victim type. He was standing on the walkway near the brink of the thoroughfare. I'm going back to the habitat hotel and sit tight."
"First you have to get there," Dimanche pointed out. "I mean, is it safe for a stranger to walk through the city?"
"Now that you mention it, no," answered Cassal. He looked around apprehensively. "Where is he?"
"Behind you. At the moment he's pretending interest in a merchandise display."
A native stamped by, eyes brown and incurious. Apparently he was accustomed to the sight of an Earthman standing alone, Adam's apple bobbing up and down silently. It was a Godolphian axiom that all travelers were crazy.
Cassal looked up. Not an air taxi in sight; Godolph shut down at dusk. It would be pure luck if he found a taxi before morning. Of course he could walk back to the hotel, but was that such a good idea?
A Godolphian city was peculiar. And, though not intended, it was peculiarly suited to certain kinds of violence. A human pedestrian was at a definite disadvantage.
"Correction," said Dimanche. "Not simple assault. He has murder in mind."
"It still doesn't appeal to me," said Cassal. Striving to look unconcerned, he strolled toward the building side of the walkway and stared into the interior of a small cafe. Warm, bright and dry. Inside, he might find safety for a time.
Damn the man who was following him! It would be easy enough to elude him in a normal city. On Godolph, nothing was normal. In an hour the streets would be brightly lighted—for native eyes. A human would consider it dim.
"Why did he choose me?" asked Cassal plaintively. "There must be something he hopes to gain."
"I'm working on it," said Dimanche. "But remember, I have limitations. At short distances I can scan nervous systems, collect and interpret physiological data. I can't read minds. The best I can do is report what a person says or subvocalizes. If you're really interested in finding out why he wants to kill you, I suggest you turn the problem over to the godawful police."
"Godolph, not godawful," corrected Cassal absently.
That was advice he couldn't follow, good as it seemed. He could give the police no evidence save through Dimanche. There were various reasons, many of them involving the law, for leaving the device called Dimanche out of it. The police would act if they found a body. His own, say, floating face-down on some quiet street. That didn't seem the proper approach, either.
"Weapons?"
"The first thing I searched him for. Nothing very dangerous. A long knife, a hard striking object. Both concealed on his person."
Cassal strangled slightly. Dimanche needed a good stiff course in semantics. A knife was still the most silent of weapons. A man could die from it. His hand strayed toward his pocket. He had a measure of protection himself.
"Report," said Dimanche. "Not necessarily final. Based, perhaps, on tenuous evidence."
"Let's have it anyway."
"His motivation is connected somehow with your being marooned here. For some reason you can't get off this planet."
That was startling information, though not strictly true. A thousand star systems were waiting for him, and a ship to take him to each one.
Of course, the one ship he wanted hadn't come in. Godolph was a transfer point for stars nearer the center of the Galaxy. When he had left Earth, he had known he would have to wait a few days here. He hadn't expected a delay of nearly three weeks. Still, it wasn't unusual. Interstellar schedules over great distances were not as reliable as they might be.
Was this man, whoever and whatever he might be, connected with that delay? According to Dimanche, the man thought he was. He was self-deluded or did he have access to information that Cassal didn't?
Denton Cassal, sales engineer, paused for a mental survey of himself. He was a good engineer and, because he was exceptionally well matched to his instrument, the best salesman that Neuronics, Inc., had. On the basis of these qualifications, he had been selected to make a long journey, the first part of which already lay behind him. He had to go to Tunney 21 to see a man. That man wasn't important to anyone save the company that employed him, and possibly not even to them.
The thug trailing him wouldn't be interested in Cassal himself, his mission, which was a commercial one, nor the man on Tunney. And money wasn't the objective, if Dimanche's analysis was right. What did the thug want?
Secrets? Cassal had none, except, in a sense, Dimanche. And that was too well kept on Earth, where the instrument was invented and made, for anyone this far away to have learned about it.
And yet the thug wanted to kill him. Wanted to? Regarded him as good as dead. It might pay him to investigate the matter further, if it didn't involve too much risk.
"Better start moving." That was Dimanche. "He's getting suspicious."
Cassal went slowly along the narrow walkway that bordered each side of that boulevard, the transport tide. It was raining again. It usually was on Godolph, which was a weather-controlled planet where the natives like rain.
He adjusted the controls of the weak force field that repelled the rain. He widened the angle of the field until water slanted through it unhindered. He narrowed it around him until it approached visibility and the drops bounced away. He swore at the miserable climate and the near amphibians who created it.
A few hundred feet away, a Godolphian girl waded out of the transport tide and climbed to the walkway. It was this sort of thing that made life dangerous for a human—Venice revised, brought up to date in a faster-than-light age.
Water. It was a perfect engineering material. Simple, cheap, infinitely flexible. With a minimum of mechanism and at break-neck speed, the ribbon of the transport tide flowed at different levels throughout the city. The Godolphian merely plunged in and was carried swiftly and noiselessly to his destination. Whereas a human—Cassal shivered. If he were found drowned, it would be considered an accident. No investigation would be made. The thug who was trailing him had certainly picked the right place.
The Godolphian girl passed. She wore a sleek brown fur, her own. Cassal was almost positive she muttered a polite "Arf?" as she sloshed by. What she meant by that, he didn't know and didn't intend to find out.
"Follow her," instructed Dimanche. "We've got to investigate our man at closer range."
Obediently, Cassal turned and began walking after the girl. Attractive in an anthropomorphic, seal-like way, even from behind. Not graceful out of her element, though.
The would-be assassin was still looking at merchandise as Cassal retraced his steps. A man, or at least man type. A big fellow, physically quite capable of violence, if size had anything to do with it. The face, though, was out of character. Mild, almost meek. A scientist or scholar. It didn't fit with murder.
"Nothing," said Dimanche disgustedly. "His mind froze when we got close. I could feel his shoulderblades twitching as we passed. Anticipated guilt, of course. Projecting to you the action he plans. That makes the knife definite."
Well beyond the window at which the thug watched and waited, Cassal stopped. Shakily he produced a cigarette and fumbled for a lighter.
"Excellent thinking," commended Dimanche. "He won't attempt anything on this street. Too dangerous. Turn aside at the next deserted intersection and let him follow the glow of your cigarette."
The lighter flared in his hand. "That's one way of finding out," said Cassal. "But wouldn't I be a lot safer if I just concentrated on getting back to the hotel?"
"I'm curious. Turn here."
"Go to hell," said Cassal nervously. Nevertheless, when he came to that intersection, he turned there.
It was a Godolphian equivalent of an alley, narrow and dark, oily slow-moving water gurgling at one side, high cavernous walls looming on the other.
He would have to adjust the curiosity factor of Dimanche. It was all very well to be interested in the man who trailed him, but there was also the problem of coming out of this adventure alive. Dimanche, an electronic instrument, naturally wouldn't consider that.
"Easy," warned Dimanche. "He's at the entrance to the alley, walking fast. He's surprised and pleased that you took this route."
"I'm surprised, too," remarked Cassal. "But I wouldn't say I'm pleased. Not just now."
"Careful. Even subvocalized conversation is distracting." The mechanism concealed within his body was silent for an instant and then continued:
"His blood pressure is rising, breathing is faster. At a time like this, he may be ready to verbalize why he wants to murder you. This is critical."
"That's no lie," agreed Cassal bitterly. The lighter was in his hand. He clutched it grimly. It was difficult not to look back. The darkness assumed an even more sinister quality.
"Quiet," said Dimanche. "He's verbalizing about you."
"He's decided I'm a nice fellow after all. He's going to stop and ask me for a light."
"I don't think so," answered Dimanche. "He's whispering: 'Poor devil. I hate to do it. But it's really his life or mine'."
"He's more right than he knows. Why all this violence, though? Isn't there any clue?"
"None at all," admitted Dimanche. "He's very close. You'd better turn around."
Cassal turned, pressed the stud on the lighter. It should have made him feel more secure, but it didn't. He could see very little.
A dim shadow rushed at him. He jumped away from the water side of the alley, barely in time. He could feel the rush of air as the assailant shot by.
"Hey!" shouted Cassal.
Echoes answered; nothing else did. He had the uncomfortable feeling that no one was going to come to his assistance.
"He wasn't expecting that reaction," explained Dimanche. "That's why he missed. He's turned around and is coming back."
"I'm armed!" shouted Cassal.
"That won't stop him. He doesn't believe you."
Cassal grasped the lighter. That is, it had been a lighter a few seconds before. Now a needle-thin blade had snapped out and projected stiffly. Originally it had been designed as an emergency surgical instrument. A little imagination and a few changes had altered its function, converting it into a compact, efficient stiletto.
"Twenty feet away," advised Dimanche. "He knows you can't see him, but he can see your silhouette by the light from the main thoroughfare. What he doesn't know is that I can detect every move he makes and keep you posted below the level of his hearing."
"Stay on him," growled Cassal nervously. He flattened himself against the wall.
"To the right," whispered Dimanche. "Lunge forward. About five feet. Low."
Sickly, he did so. He didn't care to consider the possible effects of a miscalculation. In the darkness, how far was five feet? Fortunately, his estimate was correct. The rapier encountered yielding resistance, the soggy kind: flesh. The tough blade bent, but did not break. His opponent gasped and broke away.
"Attack!" howled Dimanche against the bone behind his ear. "You've got him. He can't imagine how you know where he is in the darkness. He's afraid."
Attack he did, slicing about wildly. Some of the thrusts landed; some didn't. The percentage was low, the total amount high. His opponent fell to the ground, gasped and was silent.
Cassal fumbled in his pockets and flipped on a light. The man lay near the water side of the alley. One leg was crumpled under him. He didn't move.
"Heartbeat slow," said Dimanche solemnly. "Breathing barely perceptible."
"Then he's not dead," said Cassal in relief.
Foam flecked from the still lips and ran down the chin. Blood oozed from cuts on the face.
"Respiration none, heartbeat absent," stated Dimanche.
Horrified, Cassal gazed at the body. Self-defense, of course, but would the police believe it? Assuming they did, they'd still have to investigate. The rapier was an illegal concealed weapon. And they would question him until they discovered Dimanche. Regrettable, but what could he do about it?
Suppose he were detained long enough to miss the ship bound for Tunney
21?
Grimly, he laid down the rapier. He might as well get to the bottom of this. Why had the man attacked? What did he want?
"I don't know," replied Dimanche irritably. "I can interpret body data—a live body. I can't work on a piece of meat."
Cassal searched the body thoroughly. Miscellaneous personal articles of no value in identifying the man. A clip with a startling amount of money in it. A small white card with something scribbled on it. A picture of a woman and a small child posed against a background which resembled no world Cassal had ever seen. That was all.
Cassal stood up in bewilderment. Dimanche to the contrary, there seemed to be no connection between this dead man and his own problem of getting to Tunney 21.
Right now, though, he had to dispose of the body. He glanced toward the boulevard. So far no one had been attracted by the violence.
He bent down to retrieve the lighter-rapier. Dimanche shouted at him. Before he could react, someone landed on him. He fell forward, vainly trying to grasp the weapon. Strong fingers felt for his throat as he was forced to the ground.
He threw the attacker off and staggered to his feet. He heard footsteps rushing away. A slight splash followed. Whoever it was, he was escaping by way of water.
Whoever it was. The man he had thought he had slain was no longer in sight.
"Interpret body data, do you?" muttered Cassal. "Liveliest dead man I've ever been strangled by."
"It's just possible there are some breeds of men who can control the basic functions of their body," said Dimanche defensively. "When I checked him, he had no heartbeat."
"Remind me not to accept your next evaluation so completely," grunted Cassal. Nevertheless, he was relieved, in a fashion. He hadn't wanted to kill the man. And now there was nothing he'd have to explain to the police.
He needed the cigarette he stuck between his lips. For the second time he attempted to pick up the rapier-lighter. This time he was successful. Smoke swirled into his lungs and quieted his nerves. He squeezed the weapon into the shape of a lighter and put it away.
Something, however, was missing—his wallet.
The thug had relieved him of it in the second round of the scuffle. Persistent fellow. Damned persistent.
It really didn't matter. He fingered the clip he had taken from the supposedly dead body. He had intended to turn it over to the police. Now he might as well keep it to reimburse him for his loss. It contained more money than his wallet had.
Except for the identification tab he always carried in his wallet, it was more than a fair exchange. The identification, a rectangular piece of plastic, was useful in establishing credit, but with the money he now had, he wouldn't need credit. If he did, he could always send for another tab.
A white card fluttered from the clip. He caught it as it fell. Curiously he examined it. Blank except for one crudely printed word, STAB. His unknown assailant certainly had tried.
The old man stared at the door, an obsolete visual projector wobbling precariously on his head. He closed his eyes and the lettering on the door disappeared. Cassal was too far away to see what it had been. The technician opened his eyes and concentrated. Slowly a new sign formed on the door.
TRAVELERS AID BUREAU Murra Foray, First Counselor
It was a drab sign, but, then, it was a dismal, backward planet. The old technician passed on to the next door and closed his eyes again.
With a sinking feeling, Cassal walked toward the entrance. He needed help and he had to find it in this dingy rathole.
Inside, though, it wasn't dingy and it wasn't a rathole. More like a maze, an approved scientific one. Efficient, though not comfortable. Travelers Aid was busier than he thought it would be. Eventually he managed to squeeze into one of the many small counseling rooms.
A woman appeared on the screen, crisp and cool. "Please answer everything the machine asks. When the tape is complete, I'll be available for consultation."
Cassal wasn't sure he was going to like her. "Is this necessary?" he asked. "It's merely a matter of information."
"We have certain regulations we abide by." The woman smiled frostily.
"I can't give you any information until you comply with them."
"Sometimes regulations are silly," said Cassal firmly. "Let me speak to the first counselor."
"You are speaking to her," she said. Her face disappeared from the screen.
Cassal sighed. So far he hadn't made a good impression.
Travelers Aid Bureau, in addition to regulations, was abundantly supplied with official curiosity. When the machine finished with him, Cassal had the feeling he could be recreated from the record it had of him. His individuality had been capsuled into a series of questions and answers. One thing he drew the line at—why he wanted to go to Tunney
21 was his own business.
The first counselor reappeared. Age, indeterminate. Not, he supposed, that anyone would be curious about it. Slightly taller than average, rather on the slender side. Face was broad at the brow, narrow at the chin and her eyes were enigmatic. A dangerous woman.
She glanced down at the data. "Denton Cassal, native of Earth. Destination, Tunney 21." She looked up at him. "Occupation, sales engineer. Isn't that an odd combination?" Her smile was quite superior.
"Not at all. Scientific training as an engineer. Special knowledge of customer relations."
"Special knowledge of a thousand races? How convenient." Her eyebrows arched.
"I think so," he agreed blandly. "Anything else you'd like to know?"
"Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."
He could believe that or not as he wished. He didn't.
"You refused to answer why you were going to Tunney 21. Perhaps I can guess. They're the best scientists in the Galaxy. You wish to study under them."
Close—but wrong on two counts. They were good scientists, though not necessarily the best. For instance, it was doubtful that they could build Dimanche, even if they had ever thought of it, which was even less likely.
There was, however, one relatively obscure research worker on Tunney 21 that Neuronics wanted on their staff. If the fragments of his studies that had reached Earth across the vast distance meant anything, he could help Neuronics perfect instantaneous radio. The company that could build a radio to span the reaches of the Galaxy with no time lag could set its own price, which could be control of all communications, transport, trade—a galactic monopoly. Cassal's share would be a cut of all that.
His part was simple, on the surface. He was to persuade that researcher to come to Earth, if he could . Literally, he had to guess the Tunnesian's price before the Tunnesian himself knew it. In addition, the reputation of Tunnesian scientists being exceeded only by their arrogance, Cassal had to convince him that he wouldn't be working for ignorant Earth savages. The existence of such an instrument as Dimanche was a key factor.
Her voice broke through his thoughts. "Now, then, what's your problem?"
"I was told on Earth I might have to wait a few days on Godolph. I've been here three weeks. I want information on the ship bound for Tunney
21."
"Just a moment." She glanced at something below the angle of the screen. She looked up and her eyes were grave. " Rickrock C arrived yesterday. Departed for Tunney early this morning."
"Departed?" He got up and sat down again, swallowing hard. "When will the next ship arrive?"
"Do you know how many stars there are in the Galaxy?" she asked.
He didn't answer.
"That's right," she said. "Billions. Tunney, according to the notation, is near the center of the Galaxy, inside the third ring. You've covered about a third of the distance to it. Local traffic, anything within a thousand light-years, is relatively easy to manage. At longer distances, you take a chance. You've had yours and missed it. Frankly, Cassal, I don't know when another ship bound for Tunney will show up on or near Godolph. Within the next five years—maybe."
He blanched. "How long would it take to get there using local transportation, star-hopping?"
"Take my advice: don't try it. Five years, if you're lucky."
"I don't need that kind of luck."
"I suppose not." She hesitated. "You're determined to go on?" At the emphatic nod, she sighed. "If that's your decision, we'll try to help you. To start things moving, we'll need a print of your identification tab."
"There's something funny about her," Dimanche decided. It was the usual speaking voice of the instrument, no louder than the noise the blood made in coursing through arteries and veins. Cassal could hear it plainly, because it was virtually inside his ear.
Cassal ignored his private voice. "Identification tab? I don't have it with me. In fact, I may have lost it."
She smiled in instant disbelief. "We're not trying to pry into any part of your past you may wish concealed. However, it's much easier for us to help you if you have your identification. Now if you can't remember your real name and where you put your identification—" She arose and left the screen. "Just a moment."
He glared uneasily at the spot where the first counselor wasn't. His real name!
"Relax," Dimanche suggested. "She didn't mean it as a personal insult."
Presently she returned.
"I have news for you, whoever you are."
"Cassal," he said firmly. "Denton Cassal, sales engineer, Earth. If you don't believe it, send back to—" He stopped. It had taken him four months to get to Godolph, non-stop, plus a six-month wait on Earth for a ship to show up that was bound in the right direction. Over distances such as these, it just wasn't practical to send back to Earth for anything.
"I see you understand." She glanced at the card in her hand. "The spaceport records indicate that when Rickrock C took off this morning, there was a Denton Cassal on board, bound for Tunney 21."
"It wasn't I," he said dazedly. He knew who it was, though. The man who had tried to kill him last night. The reason for the attack now became clear. The thug had wanted his identification tab. Worse, he had gotten it.
"No doubt it wasn't," she said wearily. "Outsiders don't seem to understand what galactic travel entails."
Outsiders? Evidently what she called those who lived beyond the second transfer ring. Were those who lived at the edge of the Galaxy, beyond the first ring, called Rimmers? Probably.
She was still speaking: "Ten years to cross the Galaxy, without stopping. At present, no ship is capable of that. Real scheduling is impossible. Populations shift and have to be supplied. A ship is taken off a run for repairs and is never put back on. It's more urgently needed elsewhere. The man who depended on it is left waiting; years pass before he learns it's never coming.
"If we had instantaneous radio, that would help. Confusion wouldn't vanish overnight, but it would diminish. We wouldn't have to depend on ships for all the news. Reservations could be made ahead of time, credit established, lost identification replaced—"
"I've traveled before," he interrupted stiffly. "I've never had any trouble."
She seemed to be exaggerating the difficulties. True, the center was more congested. Taking each star as the starting point for a limited number of ships and using statistical probability as a guide—why, no man would arrive at his predetermined destination.
But that wasn't the way it worked. Manifestly, you couldn't compare galactic transportation to the erratic paths of air molecules in a giant room. Or could you?
For the average man, anyone who didn't have his own inter-stellar ship, was the comparison too apt? It might be.
"You've traveled outside, where there are still free planets waiting to be settled. Where a man is welcome, if he's able to work." She paused.
"The center is different. Populations are excessive. Inside the third ring, no man is allowed off a ship without an identification tab. They don't encourage immigration."
In effect, that meant no ship bound for the center would take a passenger without identification. No ship owner would run the risk of having a permanent guest on board, someone who couldn't be rid of when his money was gone.
Cassal held his head in his hands. Tunney 21 was inside the third ring.
"Next time," she said, "don't let anyone take your identification."
"I won't," he promised grimly.
The woman looked directly at him. Her eyes were bright. He revised his estimate of her age drastically downward. She couldn't be as old as he. Nothing outward had happened, but she no longer seemed dowdy. Not that he was interested. Still, it might pay him to be friendly to the first counselor.
"We're a philanthropic agency," said Murra Foray. "Your case is special, though—"
"I understand," he said gruffly. "You accept contributions."
She nodded. "If the donor is able to give. We don't ask so much that you'll have to compromise your standard of living." But she named a sum that would force him to do just that if getting to Tunney 21 took any appreciable time.
He stared at her unhappily. "I suppose it's worth it. I can always work, if I have to."
"As a salesman?" she asked. "I'm afraid you'll find it difficult to do business with Godolphians."
Irony wasn't called for at a time like this, he thought reproachfully.
"Not just another salesman," he answered definitely. "I have special knowledge of customer reactions. I can tell exactly—"
He stopped abruptly. Was she baiting him? For what reason? The instrument he called Dimanche was not known to the Galaxy at large. From the business angle, it would be poor policy to hand out that information at random. Aside from that, he needed every advantage he could get. Dimanche was his special advantage.
"Anyway," he finished lamely, "I'm a first class engineer. I can always find something in that line."
"A scientist, maybe," murmured Murra Foray. "But in this part of the Milky Way, an engineer is regarded as merely a technician who hasn't yet gained practical experience." She shook her head. "You'll do better as a salesman."
He got up, glowering. "If that's all—"
"It is. We'll keep you informed. Drop your contribution in the slot provided for that purpose as you leave."
A door, which he hadn't noticed in entering the counselling cubicle, swung open. The agency was efficient.
"Remember," the counselor called out as he left, "identification is hard to work with. Don't accept a crude forgery."
He didn't answer, but it was an idea worth considering. The agency was also eminently practical.
The exit path guided him firmly to an inconspicuous and yet inescapable contribution station. He began to doubt the philanthropic aspect of the bureau.
"I've got it," said Dimanche as Cassal gloomily counted out the sum the first counselor had named.
"Got what?" asked Cassal. He rolled the currency into a neat bundle, attached his name, and dropped it into the chute.
"The woman, Murra Foray, the first counselor. She's a Huntner."
"What's a Huntner?"
"A sub-race of men on the other side of the Galaxy. She was vocalizing about her home planet when I managed to locate her."
"Any other information?"
"None. Electronic guards were sliding into place as soon as I reached her. I got out as fast as I could."
"I see." The significance of that, if any, escaped him. Nevertheless, it sounded depressing.
"What I want to know is," said Dimanche, "why such precautions as electronic guards? What does Travelers Aid have that's so secret?"
Cassal grunted and didn't answer. Dimanche could be annoyingly inquisitive at times.
Cassal had entered one side of a block-square building. He came out on the other side. The agency was larger than he had thought. The old man was staring at a door as Cassal came out. He had apparently changed every sign in the building. His work finished, the technician was removing the visual projector from his head as Cassal came up to him. He turned and peered.
"You stuck here, too?" he asked in the uneven voice of the aged.
"Stuck?" repeated Cassal. "I suppose you can call it that. I'm waiting for my ship." He frowned. He was the one who wanted to ask questions.
"Why all the redecoration? I thought Travelers Aid was an old agency. Why did you change so many signs? I could understand it if the agency were new."
The old man chuckled. "Re-organization. The previous first counselor resigned suddenly, in the middle of the night, they say. The new one didn't like the name of the agency, so she ordered it changed."
She would do just that, thought Cassal. "What about this Murra Foray?"
The old man winked mysteriously. He opened his mouth and then seemed overcome with senile fright. Hurriedly he shuffled away.
Cassal gazed after him, baffled. The old man was afraid for his job, afraid of the first counselor. Why he should be, Cassal didn't know. He shrugged and went on. The agency was now in motion in his behalf, but he didn't intend to depend on that alone.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Appointment In Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Following World War III at the end of the 20th century, American society is dependent upon a machine created by the Thinker's Foundation; this machine, named Maizie, has the ability to answer any question posed to it, and it is used often by politicians and public figures for societal decision making. Jorj Helmuth, a Thinker with hypnotic abilities, awakes with a girl, Caddy, asleep beside him. Jorj is struck with a revelation about new developments in his work towards space domination, and he sends a letter to a group of physicists calling for a meeting later that afternoon. Jorj is then alerted that the President has arrived to consult Maizie. He commences the daily procedure of feeding the machine questions through a tape, and meanwhile attention turns to a broadcast of a rocket taking off to Mars. The Secretary of Space, who joined the President, is wary of his exclusion in this project, but disregards it as he credits Maizie for the decision. Jorj discloses that the Thinkers plan to find ways to gain access to and control of Martian minds. As Maizie begins answering questions, one of them sparks curiosity, asking whether Maizie is short for Maelzel. The machine responds with \"no\" as the officials are perplexed by the question, which references a character in a story by Edgar Allen Poe in which a machine was found to be fake and operated by a man. Apparently, the question came from a member of Opperly's group, a team of physicists; Jorj advises that the issue be looked into. Later, scientists Opperly and Farquar discuss the previous events. Opperly says that he covered for Farquar, who submitted the question, but still disagrees with his decision to dig at the Thinkers. Farquar believes that the Thinkers, along with Maizie, are fakes and ought to be exposed. Farquar and Opperly go back and forth, debating whether or not exposing the Thinkers is worth violence or energy, when Farquar receives a message from Jorj regarding the meeting about his space project. Opperly is skeptical of Jorj's motives, but Farquar plans to go anyway. On his way home, Jorj ponders the future of the Thinkers with excitement, eagerly awaiting a future where they would be on the same level of the Scientists, and where they would build the true Maizie.",
"In an alternate history of America, wherein World War III has occurred, Jorj Helmuth wakes up and turns off the device which enables him to learn in his sleep. Jorj is a forty year old Thinker, a class of individuals who work with the US government on various projects, such as monthly rockets to Mars and a super-intelligent computer Maizie. As Jorj prepares for his day, he receives a call from the President, who is waiting to see Maizie. \nMaizie, a large computer with large panels, controls, indicators, and terminals occupies a two-story room in the Thinkers’ Foundation, in which the President and members of his cabinet are waiting. It is described as many times more intelligent than humans, and was built by the Thinkers despite the skepticism of cyberneticists and scientists. The president, his secretary, two generals, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Space regard Maizie with reverence, speaking in hushed tones for fear that it could overhear them despite the knowledge that it only receives input from the ticker tape fed to it. Jorj enters onto the tape questions from the officials, before noticing an errant question, which he learns is from Morton Opperly’s group of physicists. He feeds the tape to Maizie, which begins to emit a noise indicative of the start of its processes.\nAs they await Maizie’s answers, Jorj directs their attention to a television screen broadcasting the launch of a rocket to Mars. We learn that Martians have imparted profound wisdom through the Thinkers to the world, which still suffers from the effects of the third world war. In response to the President’s wish that Martians be brought to Earth to directly share their mental science, Jorj reminds him that only the Thinkers’ minds can safely interact with the Martians’. \nThe narrator reveals that inside Maizie is, rather than complicated machinery etching the edges of molecules to store information, a man who manually answers the input questions. He pauses when he reaches the question from Opperly’s group, which asks if Maizie stands for Maelzel. He types out a response in the negative and continues. It is also revealed that the rocket launched for Mars only travels acutely beyond the ionosphere, rather than to its advertised destination. The astronaut, who is accompanied by his cat, reads about the knowledge which he would pass off as Martian wisdom upon his descent to Earth. \nMaizie has returned the output tape, and the Secretary of Space wonders aloud who Maelzel is. One of the generals recalls that it is from a story about a chess automaton inside which was actually a man. They dismiss Opperly’s group as confused. \nIn Opperly’s residence however, Opperly and Willard Farquar discuss the Thinkers’ deception. Though Farquar aims to reveal the sham, Opperly is unsure he will succeed, citing that people want to be told what they wish were true. Farquhar receives an invitation from Jorj, which they surmise is because of a demand for rockets in the near future.\n",
"The story is set after World War III. Jorj is a Thinker that occasionally uses hypnotic control on a girl named Caddy to make her agreeable with him. The Thinkers have made big claims that they have achieved great technological feats. They claim that they have created a cubic brain-machine that is intelligent and knows everything. They say the machine event helped finished building itself. They also have claimed that they have nuclear powered Mars rockets. This too is not true. They send a person to space pretending that the person is headed towards Mars, when in reality that person will be circling the Earth for two months. Not everyone knows of the lies, the President and secretary of state do not. \n\nDuring a review of the tapes for Maizie, the group comes across an unusual question asking about Maizie. Jorj finds out that the question was written by Opperly’s group. Opperly and Farquar are two scientists that know of the Thinkers deception. Farquar is the one who wrote the question, to Opperly’s dismay. Caddy was previously with Farquar, before she went with Jorj. \n\nOpperly and Farquar disagree over how they should respond to the Thinker’s deceptions. Farquar wants to act with violence to continue to try to expose them. Opperly reasons that they tried to expose the Thinkers before and nothing happened, so they should cut their losses. Farquar suggests that the Thinkers are vulnerable because their technology does not exist and it would be easy to attack them. Opperly is concerned that the Thinkers may be able to buy Farquar off if they offer Caddy back to him. \n\nAt the end of the story, Jorj has plans to make sure the Thinkers no longer have to use deception. He excitedly thinks of how the Thinkers can build the true Mars rocket and even perhaps the true Maizie and goes to sleep with these thoughts in his mind. \n",
"After waking up, Jorj Helmuth, a Thinker, sends a message to Farquar and the other professionals so that he can get help in building a rocket. He states that he has funds from the government and wishes to work together. Importantly, the girl, who is sleeping next to Jorj, is controls hypnotically by Jorj, and she is somehow connected to Farquar. \n\nThe president then shows up waiting to see Maizie. Standing before the two stories high electrical brain, he feels like he is seeing the actual God. Not only does he feels so, the generals wonders if this is the Second Coming, the Secretary of State feels the power and respect in wisdom that this machine has, the Secretary of Space is relieved that the Thinks are the ones who built it rather than the professional physicists who does not get things done but simply tell you how things should be done. While surprised at the question that the Opperly’s group asked, Jorj simply entered all the questions for Maizie to solve on the tape. Then he suggests that the government officials should watch the takeoff of the rocket that is going to Mars. While the Secretary of Space is somewhat angry at Jorj for not even informing him about the spaceship, he tells himself that the Thinkers had rescued him from breakdowns and will be bringing mental discoveries from Mars. \n\nAs Maizie continues to work, the readers learn that there is actually a person that work on the questions as they enter into Maizie. He reads the questions and write down their answers. Interestingly, he also notices the question from the Opperly’s group. It makes him somewhat angry. After the rocket goes into space, Jorj gives the answers that are produced by Maizie to each government official. Then we learn that the Opperly’s group is asking about Maelzel. Maelzel was a chess playing machine that was proven to have a man hidden inside it. Later we learned that the Opperly’s group knows that Maizie also has a man hidden in it, and they wanted to tease them. Which is why they wrote the question. Apparently they succeeded, since the question got Jorj angry.\n\nWe then see two physicists, namely Opperly and Farquar, arguing over whether the world needs a magician or a physicist right now when the invitation that Jorj previously sent arrives. Opperly is suspicious of the invitation and what they will do to Farquar, mentioning the girl that ran off with a Thinker. Indeed, Jorj is not only thinking of building a Mars rocket, he also want to have other things built such as Maizie, so that the Thinkers will be farther ahead from with the scientists. But Farquar does not think so."
] |
51152
|
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
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What effect does Farquar have on the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Appointment In Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
Question:
What effect does Farquar have on the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Farquar sparks the driving conflict of the story; the question he submits threatens the authority and legitimacy of the Thinkers, implying that the machine that guides society's decisions is a fake. This question disturbs the officials present at Maizie's event. Farquar also attempts to convince Opperly, a major Scientist, that the Thinkers should be exposed and called out for their deception. He is eager to take action against them. Farquar plays an additional role in the story as someone who Jorj must turn to for help; he is a skilled physician that the Thinkers need in order to develop their idea for a nuclear rocket. Farquar determines the fate of Jorj and the Thinkers as someone who both poses a threat to them and is needed by them.",
"Willard Farquar is a physicist who is a member of Morton Opperly’s group. He is a large individual with strong and ugly features. He has traced the path of the Thinker’s spaceship and found that, contrary to the Thinkers’ claims, the spaceships do not travel to Mars. Through Opperly, Farquar submits a revealing question to the Thinkers’ machine Maizie, antagonizing the Thinkers. \nIn Opperly’s residence, Farquar proposes further chipping away at their deception, saying that they shouldn’t avoid a task merely because of its difficulty. Opperly, who is from the previous generation of academic physicists, disagrees. Farquar condemns his generation, saying that they wasted the power of atomic energy which they could have used to influence humanity. As he is saying that the Thinkers will soon need the help of scientists to support their bluffing, an invitation from the leader of the Thinkers arrives, inviting Farquar to the Thinkers’ Foundation. We learn that one of Farquar’s previous love interests had left him for a Thinker. \n",
"Farquar creates a question for an examination that hints to the Secretary of State and Jorj that he knows the secret that they are hiding. He knows that Maizie is not the intelligent and amazing piece of machinery that they claim. He knows that there is a person behind Maizie that is helping to create the illusion that Maizie is an intelligent cubic piece of machinery. Farquar wants to fight in an act of violence against the Thinkers because of their deceit towards the population. He is upset that they lie about Maizie’s capabilities, their Mars rockets, and their Martian mental science. ",
"Farquar is a physicist who knows that the Thinkers do not have a real Maizie. He has sent the question about whether Maizie is a Maelzel to the Thinkers, teasing them. Farquar’s argument with Opperly allow us to learn about the Thinkers and the physicists. The Thinkers have the government’s control because they seems to be able to do things that the physicists are not able to, such as going to Mars, learning about their mental sciences, as well building a human-brain machine. However, we learn from Farquar that none of that is true. There is no landing on Mars, designing a human-brain machine, which is why they need the physicists help. \n\nJorj indeed decide to send an invitation to the physicists after seeing the girl that he hypnotically controls, thus the girl should be the reason that the invitation is sent to Farquar. Later we learn from Opperly that there was a girl named Miss Arkady who had been with Farquar. She could be the Caddy that Jorj mentioned. Miss Arkady apparently went off with a Thinker, and Opperly thinks that this could be the reason that they are sending this invitation to them. However, Farquar does not believe it."
] |
51152
|
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
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How are Opperly and Farquar alike and different?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Appointment In Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
Question:
How are Opperly and Farquar alike and different?
Answer:
|
[
"Opperly and Farquar are both physicists. They both have the same role in society as possessing knowledge and abilities to create technology and machinery. However, despite their similar titles, they are drastically different, both in appearance and character. Opperly is an elderly man, who looks timid and meek, though wise, next to the young, large, and impulsive Farquar. Opperly acts as a rational voice, discouraging Farquar from his rebellious and violent nature, specifically towards the Thinkers. Opperly, having lived through history, is hesitant to threaten the authority of the Thinkers and instead understands that society is in need of them. He believes that scientists should not have a place in taking action and being violent, and instead should allow the Thinkers to uphold the nation. Farquar, on the other hand, is a man of action who believes the Thinkers are immoral and inauthentic. He contrasts Opperly's reasonable nature with passion and free thinking.",
"Morton Opperly and Willard Farquar are both physicists, though they hail from different generations. They share in the knowledge that the Thinkers’ have deceived members at the highest level of government and have exposed them, to little success. Opperly, an older physicist from the age of academic scientists, is reserved and skeptical about future attempts to do the same. Farquar, however, is youthful and frustrated about their situation. Whereas Opperly is unable to imagine scientists such as Einstein and Oppenheimer using violence to achieve their ends, Farquar condemns them for wasting their opportunities to shape the future with their knowledge of atomic power. ",
"Morton Opperly is an elderly physicist. William Farquar is much younger and he too is a scientist. Opperly’s positions reflected his elderly age with his living room having books, pen and ink, and a Picasso painting. Farquar wants to continue to poke at the Thinkers to expose them for their lies. Opperly does not agree with this strategy because he does not know what is best for the planet. While he does not agree with Farquar’s desire to act upon their knowledge of the Thinkers’ lies, he does call them animals. Farquar responds by saying that he feels like an animal because he feels trapped in a cage. Opperly believes it is not worth fighting with the Thinkers, but Farquar wants the fight and he wants violence. ",
"Opperly believes that the world needs magicians right now, not them, the physicists. In the bad times, people would go desperately looking for the magic cure, while in the good times the magicians are laughed at and physicists respected. He understands that the power of the Thinkers lies in what they do not have at the moment, which is peace, honor, good conscience, etc. Farquar on the other hand thinks that they need to perform action. Thus after overruling Opperly, Farquar and other physicists decided to send teasing questions for Maizie to answer. This question indeed got Jorj, the Thinker, unhappy, and he tells the Secretary of Space to investigate it. \n\nFarquar predicts that the Thinkers will need their help in building all those machineries that they faked. Indeed, the invitation gets to them, and it is sent by Jorj stating that they should work together, and mentioning that the Thinkers have quite a lot of government funds. While Opperly thinks that the Thinkers did not simply send the invitation asking for their help, Farquar believes that he will not be persuaded to change his mind at all. "
] |
51152
|
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
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Who are the Thinkers and how are they significant to the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Appointment In Tomorrow by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
Question:
Who are the Thinkers and how are they significant to the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The Thinkers are magicians who dominate the current society. When America was in crisis post-World War III, they provided solutions to problems and questions, and acted as a more structured, moral, \"human\" group for leadership than physicists prior. The Thinkers are the creators of Maizie, a brain-like computer that answers any question; Maizie is used by many in government to make drastic decisions with the goal of preserving humanity. The Thinkers are also working towards a larger plan of moving their work to Mars, ultimately dominating Martians the same way they dominated Earth. There is also controversy surrounding the Thinkers, mainly from the Physicists, who believe that their work relies on the desperation of society and is fraudulent.",
"The Thinkers are a group of individuals led by Jorj Helmuth. Their members include Helmuth, a man who is an intermediary between government officials and the Thinkers’ super-intelligent machine Maizie, Tregarron, the man inside Maizie who produces its responses, and an unnamed astronaut who the world thinks travels to Mars and returns with Martian wisdom, when in fact he merely floats in the upper atmosphere. \nThe Thinkers have deceived government officials, including the President of the United States and his cabinet, with the use of Maizie, a machine which is advertised as being able to solve complex problems of every type. In fact, Maizie is operated by a man who writes its responses. The story revolves around an interaction between the President, his cabinet and Maizie; a discussion is also had between two physicists, Farquar and Opperly, who are aware of the Thinkers’ deception but are in disagreement with one another about whether their information should be more thoroughly shared. \n",
"The Thinkers are a group of people that won a Presidential election. Farquar exclaims that their power was not earned because of their technology but because the world is not at peace. The Thinkers are significant to the story because they make many claims about their technologies and innovations. They claim they built a cube called Maizie which is a brain machine. In addition, they have told people that they built Mars rockets with nuclear motors designed by Maizie. Neither of the two inventions are true, but rather they are deceptions. Farquar calls them Charlatans for the magician-like trickery they practice. ",
"The Thinkers are a group of charlatans that tells people what they wish to hear. But because of the times that they are in, people chooses to believe in magic. As Opperly mentions, when the time is good, people don’t need magicians. But when the time is bad, people would do anything just to get the magic cures. As Farquar sees, the Thinkers are simply lucky and are talented with their stage-managing skills. They uses the brain-machine to justify their guesses. The Thinkers have faked Maizie as well as rocket landing on Mars in order to have control over the government. All government officials would do exactly as what the Thinkers order them to do. However, the physicists knew what the Thinkers are doing, they know that their rocket did not go to Mars, Maizie is not a human-brain machine, and the mental science of the Martians is fake. But since they got the government’s support, Jorj sends an invitation to the physicists to support Jorj and the other Thinkers in building those actual machineries. Farquar thinks he should go while Opperly suggests it might be a trap. "
] |
51152
|
Appointment in Tomorrow
BY FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ED ALEXANDER
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1951. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Is it possible to have a world without moral values? Or does lack of morality become a moral value, also?
The first angry rays of the sun—which, startlingly enough, still rose in the east at 24 hour intervals—pierced the lacy tops of Atlantic combers and touched thousands of sleeping Americans with unconscious fear, because of their unpleasant similarity to the rays from World War III's atomic bombs.
They turned to blood the witch-circle of rusty steel skeletons around Inferno in Manhattan. Without comment, they pointed a cosmic finger at the tarnished brass plaque commemorating the martyrdom of the Three Physicists after the dropping of the Hell Bomb. They tenderly touched the rosy skin and strawberry bruises on the naked shoulders of a girl sleeping off a drunk on the furry and radiantly heated floor of a nearby roof garden. They struck green magic from the glassy blot that was Old Washington. Twelve hours before, they had revealed things as eerily beautiful, and as ravaged, in Asia and Russia. They pinked the white walls of the Colonial dwelling of Morton Opperly near the Institute for Advanced Studies; upstairs they slanted impartially across the Pharoahlike and open-eyed face of the elderly physicist and the ugly, sleep-surly one of young Willard Farquar in the next room. And in nearby New Washington they made of the spire of the Thinkers' Foundation a blue and optimistic glory that outshone White House, Jr.
It was America approaching the end of the Twentieth Century. America of juke-box burlesque and your local radiation hospital. America of the mask-fad for women and Mystic Christianity. America of the off-the-bosom dress and the New Blue Laws. America of the Endless War and the loyalty detector. America of marvelous Maizie and the monthly rocket to Mars. America of the Thinkers and (a few remembered) the Institute. "Knock on titanium," "Whadya do for black-outs," "Please, lover, don't think when I'm around," America, as combat-shocked and crippled as the rest of the bomb-shattered planet.
Not one impudent photon of the sunlight penetrated the triple-paned, polarizing windows of Jorj Helmuth's bedroom in the Thinker's Foundation, yet the clock in his brain awakened him to the minute, or almost. Switching off the Educational Sandman in the midst of the phrase, "... applying tensor calculus to the nucleus," he took a deep, even breath and cast his mind to the limits of the world and his knowledge. It was a somewhat shadowy vision, but, he noted with impartial approval, definitely less shadowy than yesterday morning.
Employing a rapid mental scanning technique, he next cleared his memory chains of false associations, including those acquired while asleep. These chores completed, he held his finger on a bedside button, which rotated the polarizing window panes until the room slowly filled with a muted daylight. Then, still flat on his back, he turned his head until he could look at the remarkably beautiful blonde girl asleep beside him.
Remembering last night, he felt a pang of exasperation, which he instantly quelled by taking his mind to a higher and dispassionate level from which he could look down on the girl and even himself as quaint, clumsy animals. Still, he grumbled silently, Caddy might have had enough consideration to clear out before he awoke. He wondered if he shouldn't have used his hypnotic control of the girl to smooth their relationship last night, and for a moment the word that would send her into deep trance trembled on the tip of his tongue. But no, that special power of his over her was reserved for far more important purposes.
Pumping dynamic tension into his 20-year-old muscles and confidence into his 60-year-old mind, the 40-year-old Thinker rose from bed. No covers had to be thrown off; the nuclear heating unit made them unnecessary. He stepped into his clothing—the severe tunic, tights and sockassins of the modern business man. Next he glanced at the message tape beside his phone, washed down with ginger ale a vita-amino-enzyme tablet, and walked to the window. There, gazing along the rows of newly planted mutant oaks lining Decontamination Avenue, his smooth face broke into a smile.
It had come to him, the next big move in the intricate game making up his life—and mankind's. Come to him during sleep, as so many of his best decisions did, because he regularly employed the time-saving technique of somno-thought, which could function at the same time as somno-learning.
He set his who?-where? robot for "Rocket Physicist" and "Genius Class." While it worked, he dictated to his steno-robot the following brief message:
Dear Fellow Scientist:
A project is contemplated that will have a crucial bearing on man's future in deep space. Ample non-military Government funds are available. There was a time when professional men scoffed at the Thinkers. Then there was a time when the Thinkers perforce neglected the professional men. Now both times are past. May they never return! I would like to consult you this afternoon, three o'clock sharp, Thinkers' Foundation I.
Jorj Helmuth
Meanwhile the who?-where? had tossed out a dozen cards. He glanced through them, hesitated at the name "Willard Farquar," looked at the sleeping girl, then quickly tossed them all into the addresso-robot and plugged in the steno-robot.
The buzz-light blinked green and he switched the phone to audio.
"The President is waiting to see Maizie, sir," a clear feminine voice announced. "He has the general staff with him."
"Martian peace to him," Jorj Helmuth said. "Tell him I'll be down in a few minutes."
Huge as a primitive nuclear reactor, the great electronic brain loomed above the knot of hush-voiced men. It almost filled a two-story room in the Thinkers' Foundation. Its front was an orderly expanse of controls, indicators, telltales, and terminals, the upper ones reached by a chair on a boom.
Although, as far as anyone knew, it could sense only the information and questions fed into it on a tape, the human visitors could not resist the impulse to talk in whispers and glance uneasily at the great cryptic cube. After all, it had lately taken to moving some of its own controls—the permissible ones—and could doubtless improvise a hearing apparatus if it wanted to.
For this was the thinking machine beside which the Marks and Eniacs and Maniacs and Maddidas and Minervas and Mimirs were less than Morons. This was the machine with a million times as many synapses as the human brain, the machine that remembered by cutting delicate notches in the rims of molecules (instead of kindergarten paper-punching or the Coney Island shimmying of columns of mercury). This was the machine that had given instructions on building the last three-quarters of itself. This was the goal, perhaps, toward which fallible human reasoning and biased human judgment and feeble human ambition had evolved.
This was the machine that really thought—a million-plus!
This was the machine that the timid cyberneticists and stuffy professional scientists had said could not be built. Yet this was the machine that the Thinkers, with characteristic Yankee push, had built. And nicknamed, with characteristic Yankee irreverence and girl-fondness, "Maizie."
Gazing up at it, the President of the United States felt a chord plucked within him that hadn't been sounded for decades, the dark and shivery organ chord of his Baptist childhood. Here, in a strange sense, although his reason rejected it, he felt he stood face to face with the living God: infinitely stern with the sternness of reality, yet infinitely just. No tiniest error or wilful misstep could ever escape the scrutiny of this vast mentality. He shivered.
The grizzled general—there was also one who was gray—was thinking that this was a very odd link in the chain of command. Some shadowy and usually well-controlled memories from World War II faintly stirred his ire. Here he was giving orders to a being immeasurably more intelligent than himself. And always orders of the "Tell me how to kill that man" rather than the "Kill that man" sort. The distinction bothered him obscurely. It relieved him to know that Maizie had built-in controls which made her always the servant of humanity, or of humanity's right-minded leaders—even the Thinkers weren't certain which.
The gray general was thinking uneasily, and, like the President, at a more turbid level, of the resemblance between Papal infallibility and the dictates of the machine. Suddenly his bony wrists began to tremble. He asked himself: Was this the Second Coming? Mightn't an incarnation be in metal rather than flesh?
The austere Secretary of State was remembering what he'd taken such pains to make everyone forget: his youthful flirtation at Lake Success with Buddhism. Sitting before his guru , his teacher, feeling the Occidental's awe at the wisdom of the East, or its pretense, he had felt a little like this.
The burly Secretary of Space, who had come up through United Rockets, was thanking his stars that at any rate the professional scientists weren't responsible for this job. Like the grizzled general, he'd always felt suspicious of men who kept telling you how to do things, rather than doing them themselves. In World War III he'd had his fill of the professional physicists, with their eternal taint of a misty sort of radicalism and free-thinking. The Thinkers were better—more disciplined, more human. They'd called their brain-machine Maizie, which helped take the curse off her. Somewhat.
The President's Secretary, a paunchy veteran of party caucuses, was also glad that it was the Thinkers who had created the machine, though he trembled at the power that it gave them over the Administration. Still, you could do business with the Thinkers. And nobody (not even the Thinkers) could do business (that sort of business) with Maizie!
Before that great square face with its thousands of tiny metal features, only Jorj Helmuth seemed at ease, busily entering on the tape the complex Questions of the Day that the high officials had handed him: logistics for the Endless War in Pakistan, optimum size for next year's sugar-corn crop, current thought trends in average Soviet minds—profound questions, yet many of them phrased with surprising simplicity. For figures, technical jargon, and layman's language were alike to Maizie; there was no need to translate into mathematical shorthand, as with the lesser brain-machines.
The click of the taper went on until the Secretary of State had twice nervously fired a cigaret with his ultrasonic lighter and twice quickly put it away. No one spoke.
Jorj looked up at the Secretary of Space. "Section Five, Question Four—whom would that come from?"
The burly man frowned. "That would be the physics boys, Opperly's group. Is anything wrong?"
Jorj did not answer. A bit later he quit taping and began to adjust controls, going up on the boom-chair to reach some of them. Eventually he came down and touched a few more, then stood waiting.
From the great cube came a profound, steady purring. Involuntarily the six officials backed off a bit. Somehow it was impossible for a man to get used to the sound of Maizie starting to think.
Jorj turned, smiling. "And now, gentlemen, while we wait for Maizie to celebrate, there should be just enough time for us to watch the takeoff of the Mars rocket." He switched on a giant television screen. The others made a quarter turn, and there before them glowed the rich ochres and blues of a New Mexico sunrise and, in the middle distance, a silvery mighty spindle.
Like the generals, the Secretary of Space suppressed a scowl. Here was something that ought to be spang in the center of his official territory, and the Thinkers had locked him completely out of it. That rocket there—just an ordinary Earth satellite vehicle commandeered from the Army, but equipped by the Thinkers with Maizie-designed nuclear motors capable of the Mars journey and more. The first spaceship—and the Secretary of Space was not in on it!
Still, he told himself, Maizie had decreed it that way. And when he remembered what the Thinkers had done for him in rescuing him from breakdown with their mental science, in rescuing the whole Administration from collapse he realized he had to be satisfied. And that was without taking into consideration the amazing additional mental discoveries that the Thinkers were bringing down from Mars.
"Lord," the President said to Jorj as if voicing the Secretary's feeling, "I wish you people could bring a couple of those wise little devils back with you this trip. Be a good thing for the country."
Jorj looked at him a bit coldly. "It's quite unthinkable," he said.
"The telepathic abilities of the Martians make them extremely sensitive. The conflicts of ordinary Earth minds would impinge on them psychotically, even fatally. As you know, the Thinkers were able to contact them only because of our degree of learned mental poise and errorless memory-chains. So for the present it must be our task alone to glean from the Martians their astounding mental skills. Of course, some day in the future, when we have discovered how to armor the minds of the Martians—"
"Sure, I know," the President said hastily. "Shouldn't have mentioned it, Jorj."
Conversation ceased. They waited with growing tension for the great violet flames to bloom from the base of the silvery shaft.
Meanwhile the question tape, like a New Year's streamer tossed out a high window into the night, sped on its dark way along spinning rollers. Curling with an intricate aimlessness curiously like that of such a streamer, it tantalized the silvery fingers of a thousand relays, saucily evaded the glances of ten thousand electric eyes, impishly darted down a narrow black alleyway of memory banks, and, reaching the center of the cube, suddenly emerged into a small room where a suave fat man in shorts sat drinking beer.
He flipped the tape over to him with practiced finger, eyeing it as a stockbroker might have studied a ticker tape. He read the first question, closed his eyes and frowned for five seconds. Then with the staccato self-confidence of a hack writer, he began to tape out the answer.
For many minutes the only sounds were the rustle of the paper ribbon and the click of the taper, except for the seconds the fat man took to close his eyes, or to drink or pour beer. Once, too, he lifted a phone, asked a concise question, waited half a minute, listened to an answer, then went back to the grind.
Until he came to Section Five, Question Four. That time he did his thinking with his eyes open.
The question was: "Does Maizie stand for Maelzel?"
He sat for a while slowly scratching his thigh. His loose, persuasive lips tightened, without closing, into the shape of a snarl.
Suddenly he began to tape again.
"Maizie does not stand for Maelzel. Maizie stands for amazing, humorously given the form of a girl's name. Section Six, Answer One: The mid-term election viewcasts should be spaced as follows...."
But his lips didn't lose the shape of a snarl.
Five hundred miles above the ionosphere, the Mars rocket cut off its fuel and slumped gratefully into an orbit that would carry it effortlessly around the world at that altitude. The pilot unstrapped himself and stretched, but he didn't look out the viewport at the dried-mud disc that was Earth, cloaked in its haze of blue sky. He knew he had two maddening months ahead of him in which to do little more than that. Instead, he unstrapped Sappho.
Used to free fall from two previous experiences, and loving it, the fluffy little cat was soon bounding about the cabin in curves and gyrations that would have made her the envy of all back-alley and parlor felines on the planet below. A miracle cat in the dream world of free fall. For a long time she played with a string that the man would toss out lazily. Sometimes she caught the string on the fly, sometimes she swam for it frantically.
After a while the man grew bored with the game. He unlocked a drawer and began to study the details of the wisdom he would discover on Mars this trip—priceless spiritual insights that would be balm to war-battered mankind.
The cat carefully selected a spot three feet off the floor, curled up on the air, and went to sleep.
Jorj Helmuth snipped the emerging answer tape into sections and handed each to the appropriate man. Most of them carefully tucked theirs away with little more than a glance, but the Secretary of Space puzzled over his.
"Who the devil would Maelzel be?" he asked.
A remote look came into the eyes of the Secretary of State. "Edgar Allen Poe," he said frowningly, with eyes half-closed.
The grizzled general snapped his fingers. "Sure! Maelzel's Chess player. Read it when I was a kid. About an automaton that was supposed to play chess. Poe proved it hid a man inside it."
The Secretary of Space frowned. "Now what's the point in a fool question like that?"
"You said it came from Opperly's group?" Jorj asked sharply.
The Secretary of Space nodded. The others looked at the two men puzzledly.
"Who would that be?" Jorj pressed. "The group, I mean."
The Secretary of Space shrugged. "Oh, the usual little bunch over at the Institute. Hindeman, Gregory, Opperly himself. Oh, yes, and young Farquar."
"Sounds like Opperly's getting senile," Jorj commented coldly. "I'd investigate."
The Secretary of Space nodded. He suddenly looked tough. "I will. Right away."
Sunlight striking through French windows spotlighted a ballet of dust motes untroubled by air-conditioning. Morton Opperly's living room was well-kept but worn and quite behind the times. Instead of reading tapes there were books; instead of steno-robots, pen and ink; while in place of a four by six TV screen, a Picasso hung on the wall. Only Opperly knew that the painting was still faintly radioactive, that it had been riskily so when he'd smuggled it out of his bomb-singed apartment in New York City.
The two physicists fronted each other across a coffee table. The face of the elder was cadaverous, large-eyed, and tender—fined down by a long life of abstract thought. That of the younger was forceful, sensuous, bulky as his body, and exceptionally ugly. He looked rather like a bear.
Opperly was saying, "So when he asked who was responsible for the Maelzel question, I said I didn't remember." He smiled. "They still allow me my absent-mindedness, since it nourishes their contempt. Almost my sole remaining privilege." The smile faded. "Why do you keep on teasing the zoo animals, Willard?" he asked without rancor. "I've maintained many times that we shouldn't truckle to them by yielding to their demand that we ask Maizie questions. You and the rest have overruled me. But then to use those questions to convey veiled insults isn't reasonable. Apparently the Secretary of Space was bothered enough about this last one to pay me a 'copter call within twenty minutes of this morning's meeting at the Foundation. Why do you do it, Willard?"
The features of the other convulsed unpleasantly. "Because the Thinkers are charlatans who must be exposed," he rapped out. "We know their Maizie is no more than a tealeaf-reading fake. We've traced their Mars rockets and found they go nowhere. We know their Martian mental science is bunk."
"But we've already exposed the Thinkers very thoroughly," Opperly interposed quietly. "You know the good it did."
Farquar hunched his Japanese-wrestler shoulders. "Then it's got to be done until it takes."
Opperly studied the bowl of mutated flowers by the coffee pot. "I think you just want to tease the animals, for some personal reason of which you probably aren't aware."
Farquar scowled. "We're the ones in the cages."
Opperly continued his inspection of the flowers' bells. "All the more reason not to poke sticks through the bars at the lions and tigers strolling outside. No, Willard, I'm not counseling appeasement. But consider the age in which we live. It wants magicians." His voice grew especially tranquil. "A scientist tells people the truth. When times are good—that is, when the truth offers no threat—people don't mind. But when times are very, very bad...." A shadow darkened his eyes.
"Well, we all know what happened to—" And he mentioned three names that had been household words in the middle of the century. They were the names on the brass plaque dedicated to the martyred three physicists.
He went on, "A magician, on the other hand, tells people what they wish were true—that perpetual motion works, that cancer can be cured by colored lights, that a psychosis is no worse than a head cold, that they'll live forever. In good times magicians are laughed at. They're a luxury of the spoiled wealthy few. But in bad times people sell their souls for magic cures, and buy perpetual motion machines to power their war rockets."
Farquar clenched his fist. "All the more reason to keep chipping away at the Thinkers. Are we supposed to beg off from a job because it's difficult and dangerous?"
Opperly shook his head. "We're to keep clear of the infection of violence. In my day, Willard, I was one of the Frightened Men. Later I was one of the Angry Men and then one of the Minds of Despair. Now I'm convinced that all my reactions were futile."
"Exactly!" Farquar agreed harshly. "You reacted. You didn't act. If you men who discovered atomic energy had only formed a secret league, if you'd only had the foresight and the guts to use your tremendous bargaining position to demand the power to shape mankind's future...."
"By the time you were born, Willard," Opperly interrupted dreamily,
"Hitler was merely a name in the history books. We scientists weren't the stuff out of which cloak-and-dagger men are made. Can you imagine Oppenheimer wearing a mask or Einstein sneaking into the Old White House with a bomb in his briefcase?" He smiled. "Besides, that's not the way power is seized. New ideas aren't useful to the man bargaining for power—only established facts or lies are."
"Just the same, it would have been a good thing if you'd had a little violence in you."
"No," Opperly said.
"I've got violence in me," Farquar announced, shoving himself to his feet.
Opperly looked up from the flowers. "I think you have," he agreed.
"But what are we to do?" Farquar demanded. "Surrender the world to charlatans without a struggle?"
Opperly mused for a while. "I don't know what the world needs now. Everyone knows Newton as the great scientist. Few remember that he spent half his life muddling with alchemy, looking for the philosopher's stone. Which Newton did the world need then?"
"Now you are justifying the Thinkers!"
"No, I leave that to history."
"And history consists of the actions of men," Farquar concluded. "I intend to act. The Thinkers are vulnerable, their power fantastically precarious. What's it based on? A few lucky guesses. Faith-healing. Some science hocus-pocus, on the level of those juke-box burlesque acts between the strips. Dubious mental comfort given to a few nerve-torn neurotics in the Inner Cabinet—and their wives. The fact that the Thinkers' clever stage-managing won the President a doubtful election. The erroneous belief that the Soviets pulled out of Iraq and Iran because of the Thinkers' Mind Bomb threat. A brain-machine that's just a cover for Jan Tregarron's guesswork. Oh, yes, and that hogwash of
'Martian wisdom.' All of it mere bluff! A few pushes at the right times and points are all that are needed—and the Thinkers know it! I'll bet they're terrified already, and will be more so when they find that we're gunning for them. Eventually they'll be making overtures to us, turning to us for help. You wait and see."
"I am thinking again of Hitler," Opperly interposed quietly. "On his first half dozen big steps, he had nothing but bluff. His generals were against him. They knew they were in a cardboard fort. Yet he won every battle, until the last. Moreover," he pressed on, cutting Farquar short, "the power of the Thinkers isn't based on what they've got, but on what the world hasn't got—peace, honor, a good conscience...."
The front-door knocker clanked. Farquar answered it. A skinny old man with a radiation scar twisting across his temple handed him a tiny cylinder. "Radiogram for you, Willard." He grinned across the hall at Opperly. "When are you going to get a phone put in, Mr. Opperly?"
The physicist waved to him. "Next year, perhaps, Mr. Berry."
The old man snorted with good-humored incredulity and trudged off.
"What did I tell you about the Thinkers making overtures?" Farquar chortled suddenly. "It's come sooner than I expected. Look at this."
He held out the radiogram, but the older man didn't take it. Instead he asked, "Who's it from? Tregarron?"
"No, from Helmuth. There's a lot of sugar corn about man's future in deep space, but the real reason is clear. They know that they're going to have to produce an actual nuclear rocket pretty soon, and for that they'll need our help."
"An invitation?"
Farquar nodded. "For this afternoon." He noticed Opperly's anxious though distant frown. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Are you bothered about my going? Are you thinking it might be a trap—that after the Maelzel question they may figure I'm better rubbed out?"
The older man shook his head. "I'm not afraid for your life, Willard. That's yours to risk as you choose. No, I'm worried about other things they might do to you."
"What do you mean?" Farquar asked.
Opperly looked at him with a gentle appraisal. "You're a strong and vital man, Willard, with a strong man's prides and desires." His voice trailed off for a bit. Then, "Excuse me, Willard, but wasn't there a girl once? A Miss Arkady?"
Farquar's ungainly figure froze. He nodded curtly, face averted.
"And didn't she go off with a Thinker?"
"If girls find me ugly, that's their business," Farquar said harshly, still not looking at Opperly. "What's that got to do with this invitation?"
Opperly didn't answer the question. His eyes got more distant. Finally he said, "In my day we had it a lot easier. A scientist was an academician, cushioned by tradition."
Willard snorted. "Science had already entered the era of the police inspectors, with laboratory directors and political appointees stifling enterprise."
"Perhaps," Opperly agreed. "Still, the scientist lived the safe, restricted, highly respectable life of a university man. He wasn't exposed to the temptations of the world."
Farquar turned on him. "Are you implying that the Thinkers will somehow be able to buy me off?"
"Not exactly."
"You think I'll be persuaded to change my aims?" Farquar demanded angrily.
Opperly shrugged his helplessness. "No, I don't think you'll change your aims."
Clouds encroaching from the west blotted the parallelogram of sunlight between the two men.
As the slideway whisked him gently along the corridor toward his apartment, Jorj was thinking of his spaceship. For a moment the silver-winged vision crowded everything else out of his mind.
Just think, a spaceship with sails! He smiled a bit, marveling at the paradox.
Direct atomic power. Direct utilization of the force of the flying neutrons. No more ridiculous business of using a reactor to drive a steam engine, or boil off something for a jet exhaust—processes that were as primitive and wasteful as burning gunpowder to keep yourself warm.
Chemical jets would carry his spaceship above the atmosphere. Then would come the thrilling order, "Set sail for Mars!" The vast umbrella would unfold and open out around the stern, its rear or Earthward side a gleaming expanse of radioactive ribbon perhaps only an atom thick and backed with a material that would reflect neutrons. Atoms in the ribbon would split, blasting neutrons astern at fantastic velocities. Reaction would send the spaceship hurtling forward.
In airless space, the expanse of sails would naturally not retard the ship. More radioactive ribbon, manufactured as needed in the ship itself, would feed out onto the sail as that already there became exhausted.
A spaceship with direct nuclear drive—and he, a Thinker, had conceived it completely except for the technical details! Having strengthened his mind by hard years of somno-learning, mind-casting, memory-straightening, and sensory training, he had assured himself of the executive power to control the technicians and direct their specialized abilities. Together they would build the true Mars rocket.
But that would only be a beginning. They would build the true Mind Bomb. They would build the true Selective Microbe Slayer. They would discover the true laws of ESP and the inner life. They would even—his imagination hesitated a moment, then strode boldly forward—build the true Maizie!
And then ... then the Thinkers would be on even terms with the scientists. Rather, they'd be far ahead. No more deception.
He was so exalted by this thought that he almost let the slideway carry him past his door. He stepped inside and called, "Caddy!" He waited a moment, then walked through the apartment, but she wasn't there.
Confound the girl, he couldn't help thinking. This morning, when she should have made herself scarce, she'd sprawled about sleeping. Now, when he felt like seeing her, when her presence would have added a pleasant final touch to his glowing mood, she chose to be absent. He really should use his hypnotic control on her, he decided, and again there sprang into his mind the word—a pet form of her name—that would send her into obedient trance.
No, he told himself again, that was to be reserved for some moment of crisis or desperate danger, when he would need someone to strike suddenly and unquestioningly for himself and mankind. Caddy was merely a wilful and rather silly girl, incapable at present of understanding the tremendous tensions under which he operated. When he had time for it, he would train her up to be a fitting companion without hypnosis.
Yet the fact of her absence had a subtly disquieting effect. It shook his perfect self-confidence just a fraction. He asked himself if he'd been wise in summoning the rocket physicists without consulting Tregarron.
But this mood, too, he conquered quickly. Tregarron wasn't his boss, but just the Thinker's most clever salesman, an expert in the mumbo-jumbo so necessary for social control in this chaotic era. He himself, Jorj Helmuth, was the real leader in theoretics and all-over strategy, the mind behind the mind behind Maizie.
He stretched himself on the bed, almost instantly achieved maximum relaxation, turned on the somno-learner, and began the two hour rest he knew would be desirable before the big conference.
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How is the current McGuire version different from the previous versions and why is that important?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about His Master's Voice by Randall Garrett.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
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"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
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A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
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money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
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but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
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Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
Question:
How is the current McGuire version different from the previous versions and why is that important?
Answer:
|
[
"The most recent McGuire is the seventh edition. It is described as being more mobile as it is a spacecraft. It is potentially dangerous because it can move at thousands of miles per second. The most recent version is different from the previous six because it follows Asimov’s famous Three Laws of Robotics more closely than the other versions. The laws emphasize that a robot should define a human being and making sure the robot does not hurt a human. That has previously proven difficult. McGuire version 7 circumnavigated the issue by defining whatever first awoken the robot as a human and its controller.",
"The present iteration of the McGuire, the MGYR-7, is different in its interpretation of Asimov’s three laws of robotics. These three laws, as they are told to the reader by Daniel, are the following: firstly, a robot cannot harm a human being; secondly, a robot must obey orders from human, expect when in conflict with the first law, and thirdly, a robot shall be self-preserving, except when in conflict with the first and third laws. In the first six models of the McGuire, the engineers encoded Asimov’s laws into the machine’s directives. However, this led to erratic and insane-like behaviour from the robot when conflicting commands were issued. \n\tThe seventh iteration, however, resolves this issue by instead restricting the individuals from whom the McGuire takes orders to only that person who issues the first order. The roboticists responsible for designing the McGuire, however, have noticed issues in the MGYR-7, which they aim to resolve in the eighth iteration, the construction of which Daniel has been hired to expedite. \n",
"The previous models of McGuire struggled because of the difficulty to define what a \"human being\" is to robots. The Three Laws for robot construction state that robots must not allow harm to a human being, as well as obey orders from a human being. However, when receiving contradicting yet equally qualifying orders from two different human beings, the previous McGuire models would malfunction out of confusion. The seventh model, the current McGuire, narrowed down the definition of what a \"human being\" is, down to an individual. McGuire was constructed so that the individual he would obey would be the first individual that spoke to him when he was built. This is important because Daniel Oak, being the first human to interact with McGuire, is at the center of the robot's objectives.",
"Firstly, McGuire is different because he is mobile, in a way, he is the spaceship. Different from the traffic robot, he is in charge of one single object. But since the object is moving very fast through space where no specified pathway is determined, McGuire has to be able to react fast. Moreover, McGuire needs to understand English in order to communicate with human beings. \n\nMost importantly, the current version of the robot, McGuire, has alteration in the definition of “human being,” instead of trying to define what human being is as the previous versions did, there will be one person who McGuire takes orders from, since defining individuals are way easier. Previously, they tried to allow robots listen to any one identified as human being. However, this easily made the robots go insane. Once two people – human beings – give an opposing order, the robot does not know what to do. The robot does not know who has a higher authority, thus not knowing which order to follow. Taking order from an individual will completely avoid such problems. "
] |
48513
|
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
|
Describe a flitterboat and when it is used.
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about His Master's Voice by Randall Garrett.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
Question:
Describe a flitterboat and when it is used.
Answer:
|
[
"A flitterboat is a more economical option than a full spaceship. It is described as having a single gravitoinertial engine. It is meant to have the most basic necessities that are needed for a person to survive their journey, which includes oxygen, water, and the requirement of food necessary. The flitterboat is not necessarily more affordable, but it does provide the purpose of transporting from one Belt to another Belt. Daniel Oak details how a vacuum suit is needed to be worn in a flitterboat. Daniel describes the flitterboat as a tool that does its job, but is not comfortable. ",
"A flitterboat is a small, single-person space vehicle capable of navigating from beacon to beacon in the Belt, an area of space in which it is impractical to use full-sized spaceships. It is propelled by a single engine, and contains only a few things necessary for life - water, air, and small amounts of food. \n\tIn order to ride in a flitterboat, the passenger must wear an uncomfortable vac suit and sit straddling a drive tube. The main body of the vessel is composed of a material called transite, which is nearly transparent. The gravitational force inside a flitterboat is one gee. \n",
"A flitterboat is a smaller spaceship used for individual transportation on the Belt; to use a full sized spaceship would be inconvenient and impractical, so the flitterboat is used for local travel for one. It has a singular engine and can carry air, and a bit of food and water. It contains an anchor that holds the boat to the ground. Because it is only meant for short travels, one can only last a short amount of time in one, so flitterboats are used to get to and from different beacon points in the neighborhood.",
"The flitterboat has a single gravitoinertial engine and it contains a few necessities of life, air, water and little food. But this flitterboat still costs quite a lot. The flitterboat is used for short distance travelling since it is very hard to stay in a vacuum suit for too long. Thus it is common to hop from beacon to beacon, and this decreases the average speed since most of the time one would spend accelerating and decelerating. The flitterboat has a bucket seat for the driver and it produces a one-gee pull. It sits on the drive tube in a way similar to a witch on a broomstick. Importantly, a flitterboat cannot be stopped whenever it wants to, instead it has to get to a beacon station. Oak uses it when he was told by Raverhurst to travel to Ceres, he wears a vacuum suit when he was going to ride it. First he allowed the boat to get to the top of the planetoid by releasing the magnetic anchor and once the station is reached, the flitterboat has to be parked at the specific space assigned by the Landing Control."
] |
48513
|
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
|
What is the plot of the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about His Master's Voice by Randall Garrett.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story begins with Daniel Oak going into Ravenhurst’s office to talk with him about another job. Ravenhurst tells Daniel that there is an issue with the robot McGuire because the robot will only listen to Daniel’s commands. This happened because of the way the robot was programmed and Daniel happened to trigger the programming that attaches the robot to whoever the first person was to speak to it. \n\nRavenhurst does not like Daniel’s methods but hires him anyways to fix the situation. Daniel believes that he is hired because Ravenhurst is afraid of losing his manager position. Ravenhurst hires and sends Daniel to the planet Ceres to work with the roboticists at Viking. Daniel puts on his vacuum suit and boards a flitterboat to Ceres. The reader learns that Daniel is a double agent as he actually works for the UN government’s Secret Service agency, also known as the Political Survey Division.\n\nDaniel is sent to Ceres to help with the robot McGuire. When he arrives at Ceres he is met by Colonel Harrington Brock. He goes to have a drink with Colonel Brock and they create a separate plan from Ravenhurst and team up to implement their own solution to the McGuire problem. \n",
"Daniel Oak enters the office of Shalimar Ravenhurst, the manager of the Viking Spacecraft company whom he describes as an intelligent but unlikeable man, on the planetoid Raven’s Rest. Ravenhurst offers Daniel a glass of wine, and reminds him that he has caused him trouble in the past. He reminds Daniel that the MGYR-7, an advanced robot spaceship operating system capable of understanding and speaking English nicknamed the McGuire, considers only Daniel as its master, rendering it uncooperative. Because of the McGuire self-preservation directive, it doesn’t allow this obedience to be erased. The most efficient path forward, Ravenhurt concludes, is to build the eighth iteration of MGYR, and he hires Daniel to expedite the process. \nDaniel leaves Raven’s Rest and travels in his flitterboat to the planetoid Ceres, a large asteroid with weak a gravitational force conducive to manufacturing mainly owned by Viking, and from which it operates. Daniel is an expediter, a job which involves speeding up projects for companies who hire him. We also learn that Daniel is a member of the Political Survey Division of the UN Government, which is interested in the McGuire project. However, it is not because of its sophistication and complexity, which is similar to that of a traffic pattern control robot, that Daniel has been tasked with gathering information about the McGuire, but rather its language-processing abilities.\nDaniel describes Asimov’s three laws of the robotic brain, which in summary direct the machine to obey human beings. However, because of the difficulty in defining a human being, the first six iterations of the McGuire have failed when conflicting directions are given. Only in the seventh iteration, when the McGuire is directed to regard only the person to first give it instructions as its commander, does the machine achieve any success. \nLanding on Ceres, Daniel is greeted by Colonel Harrington Brock, the head of Ravenhurst’s Security Guard who is dressed in a black-and-gold skin tight suit. Brock invites Daniel for a drink, which he accepts. Brock tells Daniel, who feigns ignorance about the subject, about two competing companies, Thurston and Baedecker Metals & Mining, who aim to sabotage Viking in order to assume control of Ceres. Despite having been asked by Ravenhurst, who disapproves of Daniel’s methods, not to involve Daniel on the project, Brock asks for Daniel’s help on this matter of corporate espionage. Though he refuses being employed by Brock, citing conflicts of interest, he agrees to enter into a cooperative relationship and to help out. \n",
"Daniel Oak, a \"Confidential Expediter\" and agent of the Political Survey Division, is called into the office of Shalimar Ravenhurst, owner of Viking Spacecraft. Work is being done to create a new version of a complex robot, called McGuire, who has been sabotaged in its past six attempts. Daniel has been hired to get down to the issue and prevent further sabotage to the seventh model. Upon entering Ravenhurst's office, Daniel is reprimanded as he is told he caused the sabotage of McGuire. McGuire operates to avoid issues by only following the orders of one individual, that person being the first to speak to him; this person ended up being Daniel. Because of this, Ravenhurst tells Daniel that he must go to Ceres, where McGuire is being built, and aid Viking in building a new model. Daniel heads to Ceres in his flitterboat, where he meets Colonel Brock. Brock tells Daniel that a competing business, Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, is trying to drive Viking out of business and overtake Ceres and its resources by causing issues and potential sabotages. However, Brock and Daniel are both aware that it was Ravenhurst's daughter, Jack, that has been causing sabotage, which is kept under wraps. Brock then attempts to hire Daniel to help him with the situation, to which Daniel denies, saying that he cannot conflict with Ravenhurst's contract. Daniel then proposes that they instead work alongside each other, and help each other through services and tasks rather than money, and Brock agrees.",
"The story starts with Daniel Oak, a double agent, in Shalimar Raverhurst’s office, and it was the third time that he is on this mountain-sized planetoid. Raverhurst first poured Oak a glass of Madeira. Then he told Oak that he has caused quite a lot of trouble for him. We learn that there is a robot, called McGuire, that has been sabotaged by Oak while he is hired to prevent those kind of things. Because it is kind of difficult to define human being for the robots, thus McGuire is implemented to follow the order of the first person that it speaks to after activation; and apparently, that person is Oak. Then we learn that Oak is a double agent, and he pretends to not know much about this issue at all. So Raverhurst goes on telling Oak why they cannot undo this sabotage: it’s costly thus not worthwhile, and McGuire does not allow others to change his processes. \n\nThen Raverhurst tells Oak that he will be going to Ceres to help build MGYR-8. So then Oak goes into his flitterboat and is going to Ceres. Then we learn from Oak that McGuire is different from other robots such as a traffic robot. Firstly McGuire is mobile in the sense that he is the spacecraft. His spaceship travels very quickly and there is no set paths for the robot to choose from, there is the whole universe. Moreover, he has to deal with unforeseen emergencies as well as with humans. Thus McGuire needs to be able to understand English and can communicate with humans. The most difficult part is defining “human being,” thus McGuire is set to takes order from one individual. \n\nAfter Oak arrives in Ceres, Colonel Harrington Brock, who is the security guard of Ravenhurst, was waiting for him. Instead of going back for a bath and sleep, Brock asks him to have a drink together. At O’Banion’s Bar Brock asks for Oak’s help, while Oak refuses to help, he suggests that they work together in co-operation."
] |
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
|
What is the relationship between Ravenhurst and Daniel Oak?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about His Master's Voice by Randall Garrett.
Relevant chunks:
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
Question:
What is the relationship between Ravenhurst and Daniel Oak?
Answer:
|
[
"Ravenhurst and Oak do not have a friendly relationship with each other. Occasionally, Ravenhurst occasionally hires Daniel to complete certain jobs for him. Ravenhurst is a high executive at a company that makes robots. He has recently hired Daniel to fix a problem with a robot and has to rehire him to fix a problem that Daniel caused on the previous job. \n\nDaniel is not loyal to Ravenhurst because he has acknowledged that he is a double agent working for the UN government and not just Ravenhurst. In addition, Daniel decides to team up with Colonel Harrington Brock to tackle the problem at hand. The Colonel says that he is doing it in Ravenhurst’s best interests. \n",
"Daniel Oak has previously been hired by Shalimar Ravenhurst, presumably to expedite the completion of the seventh iteration of the McGuire, the MGYR-7, and to resolve the sabotage of the earlier models caused by Ravenhurst’s daughter. Though Daniel regards Ravenhurst as an intelligent man, one at the top of the managerial field, he finds Ravenhurst utterly unlikeable. \n\tIn their interaction on Raven’s Rest, the asteroid occupied by Ravenhurst’s office, Ravenhurst describes his reluctance to hire Daniel to assist in the completion of the MGYR-8 because of his part in making the development of the eighth model necessary. However, Ravenhurst nonetheless acknowledges Daniel’s skill at his job, and hires him. \n",
"Ravenhurst is Daniel Oak's employer. Daniel admires Ravenhurst professionally; he sees him as smart, savvy, and practical. However, he believes that Ravenhurst is unpleasant on an interpersonal level. When meeting Ravenhurst in his office, Daniel knows he is being reprimanded and is in an inferior position professionally. Despite this, Daniel's wit gives in and the two have a conversation with snarky remarks and sarcastic comments. Though there is a power dynamic between Ravenhurst and Daniel, Daniel is determined to appear on the same level as Ravenhurst, and throughout conversations with him tries to be one step ahead of his thought process, which irritates Ravenhurst.",
"Ravenhurst hired Daniel Oak to make sure that the robots will not be sabotaged. However, we learn in the beginning of the story that he accidentally sabotaged the robot, McGuire. Ravenhurst tells Oak that because of what he did, now Ravenhurst’s own position is threatened. Oak was hired because Ravenhurst has spent too much money on the McGuire project where things became shaky at Viking, their company. Oak was supposed to fix it, but instead his chance of losing his position as a manger seems to have increased. Then Ravenhurst tells Oak that the MGYR-7 was built with a different meaning on the term “human being” than before. Whoever what the first person that speaks to the robot after activation, that person becomes the only individual that the robot takes order from. And apparently McGuire’s first order came from Oak. So now he is the only individual that can order McGuire. Ravenhurst also tells Oak that they simply cannot change McGuire’s memory. So later, Ravenhurst asks Oak to go to Ceres to help them with building MGYR-8. And after arriving, the readers see that Brock and Oak decide to work with each other. "
] |
48513
|
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog March 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
ILLUSTRATED BY KRENKEL
HIS MASTER'S VOICE ANALOG SCIENCE FACT · SCIENCE FICTION
Spaceship McGuire had lots of knowledge—but no wisdom. He was smart—but incredibly foolish. And, as a natural consequence, tended to ask questions too profound for any philosopher—questions like "Who are you?"
By RANDALL GARRETT
I'd been in Ravenhurst's office on the mountain-sized planetoid called Raven's Rest only twice before. The third time was no better; Shalimar Ravenhurst was one of the smartest operators in the Belt, but when it came to personal relationships, he was utterly incompetent. He could make anyone dislike him without trying.
When I entered the office, he was
[3]
sitting behind his mahogany desk, his eyes focused on the operation he was going through with a wineglass and a decanter. He didn't look up at me as he said:
"Sit down, Mr. Oak. Will you have some Madeira?"
I decided I might as well observe the pleasantries. There was no point in my getting nasty until he did. "Thank you, Mr. Ravenhurst, I will."
He kept his eyes focused on his work: It isn't easy to pour wine on a planetoid where the gee-pull is measured in fractions of a centimeter per second squared. It moves slowly, like ropy molasses, but you have to be careful not to be fooled by that. The viscosity is just as low as ever, and if you pour it from any great height, it will go scooting right out of the glass
[4]
again. The momentum it builds up is enough to make it splash right out again in a slow-motion gush which gets it all over the place.
Besides which, even if it didn't splash, it would take it so long to fall a few inches that you'd die of thirst waiting for it.
Ravenhurst had evolved a technique from long years of practice. He tilted the glass and the bottle toward each other, their edges touching, like you do when you're trying to pour beer without putting a head on it. As soon as the wine wet the glass, the adhesive forces at work would pull more wine into the wine glass. To get capillary action on a low-gee asteroid, you don't need a capillary, by any means. The negative meniscus on the wine was something to see; the first time you see it, you get the eerie feeling that the glass is spinning and throwing the wine up against the walls by centrifugal force.
I took the glass he offered me (Careful! Don't slosh!) and sipped at it. Using squirt tubes would have been a hell of a lot easier and neater, but Ravenhurst liked to do things his way.
He put the stopper back in the decanter, picked up his own glass and sipped appreciatively. Not until he put it back down on the desk again did he raise his eyes and look at me for the first time since I'd come in.
"Mr. Oak, you have caused me considerable trouble."
"I thought we'd hashed all that out, Mr. Ravenhurst," I said, keeping my voice level.
[5]
"So had I. But it appears that there were more ramifications to your action than we had at first supposed." His voice had the texture of heavy linseed oil.
He waited, as if he expected me to make some reply to that. When I didn't, he sighed slightly and went on. "I fear that you have inadvertently sabotaged McGuire. You were commissioned to prevent sabotage, Mr. Oak, and I'm afraid that you abrogated your contract."
I just continued to keep my voice calm. "If you are trying to get back the fee you gave me, we can always take it to court. I don't think you'd win."
"Mr. Oak," he said heavily, "I am not a fool, regardless of what your own impression may be. If I were trying to get back that fee, I would hardly offer to pay you another one."
I didn't think he was a fool. You don't get into the managerial business and climb to the top and stay there unless you have brains. Ravenhurst was smart, all right; it was just that, when it came to personal relationships, he wasn't very wise.
"Then stop all this yak about an abrogated contract and get to the point," I told him.
"I shall. I was merely trying to point out to you that it is through your own actions that I find myself in a very trying position, and that your sense of honor and ethics should induce you to rectify the damage."
"My honor and ethics are in fine shape," I said, "but my interpretation of the concepts might not be quite
[6]
the same as yours. Get to the point."
He took another sip of Madeira. "The robotocists at Viking tell me that, in order to prevent any further ... ah ... sabotage by unauthorized persons, the MGYR-7 was constructed so that, after activation, the first man who addressed orders to it would thenceforth be considered its ... ah ... master.
"As I understand it, the problem of defining the term 'human being' unambiguously to a robot is still unsolved. The robotocists felt that it would be much easier to define a single individual. That would prevent the issuing of conflicting orders to a robot, provided the single individual were careful in giving orders himself.
"Now, it appears that you , Mr. Oak, were the first man to speak to McGuire after he had been activated. Is that correct?"
"Is that question purely rhetorical," I asked him, putting on my best expression of innocent interest. "Or are you losing your memory?" I had explained all that to him two weeks before, when I'd brought McGuire and the girl here, so that Ravenhurst would have a chance to cover up what had really happened.
My sarcasm didn't faze him in the least. "Rhetorical. It follows that you are the only man whose orders McGuire will obey."
"Your robotocists can change that," I said. This time, I was giving him my version of "genuine" innocence.
[7]
A man has to be a good actor to be a competent double agent, and I didn't want Ravenhurst to know that I knew a great deal more about the problem than he did.
He shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "No, they cannot. They realize now that there should be some way of making that change, but they failed to see that it would be necessary. Only by completely draining McGuire's memory banks and refilling them with new data can this bias be eliminated."
"Then why don't they do that?"
"There are two very good reasons," he said. And there was a shade of anger in his tone. "In the first place, that sort of operation takes time, and it costs money. If we do that, we might as well go ahead and make the slight changes in structure necessary to incorporate some of the improvements that the robotocists now feel are necessary. In other words, they might as well go ahead and build the MGYR-8, which is precisely the thing I hired you to prevent."
"It seems you have a point there, Mr. Ravenhurst." He'd hired me because things were shaky at Viking. If he lost too much more money on the McGuire experiment, he stood a good chance of losing his position as manager. If that happened some of his other managerial contracts might be canceled, too. Things like that can begin to snowball, and Ravenhurst might find himself out of the managerial business entirely.
"But," I went on, "hasn't the additional wasted time already cost you
[8]
money?"
"It has. I was reluctant to call you in again—understandably enough, I think."
"Perfectly. It's mutual."
He ignored me. "I even considered going through with the rebuilding work, now that we have traced down the source of failure of the first six models. Unfortunately, that isn't feasible, either." He scowled at me.
"It seems," he went on, "that McGuire refuses to allow his brain to be tampered with. The self-preservation 'instinct' has come to the fore. He has refused to let the technicians and robotocists enter his hull, and he has threatened to take off and leave Ceres if any further attempts are made to ... ah ... disrupt his thinking processes."
"I can't say that I blame him," I said. "What do you want me to do? Go to Ceres and tell him to submit like a good boy?"
"It is too late for that, Mr. Oak. Viking cannot stand any more of that kind of drain on its financial resources. I have been banking on the McGuire-type ships to put Viking Spacecraft ahead of every other spacecraft company in the System." He looked suddenly very grim and very determined. "Mr. Oak, I am certain that the robot ship is the answer to the transportation problems in the Solar System. For the sake of every human being in the Solar System, we must get the bugs out of McGuire!"
What's good for General Bull-moose is good for everybody , I quoted to myself. I'd have said it out loud,
[9]
but I was fairly certain that Shalimar Ravenhurst was not a student of the classics.
"Mr. Oak, I would like you to go to Ceres and co-operate with the robotocists at Viking. When the MGYR-8 is finally built, I want it to be the prototype for a fast, safe, functional robot spaceship that can be turned out commercially. You can be of great service, Mr. Oak."
"In other words, I've got you over a barrel."
"I don't deny it."
"You know what my fees are, Mr. Ravenhurst. That's what you'll be charged. I'll expect to be paid weekly; if Viking goes broke, I don't want to lose more than a week's pay. On the other hand, if the MGYR-8 is successful, I will expect a substantial bonus."
"How much?"
"Exactly half of the cost of rebuilding. Half what it would take to build a Model 8 right now, and taking a chance on there being no bugs in it."
He considered that, looking grimmer than ever. Then he said: "I will do it on the condition that the bonus be paid off in installments, one each six months for three years after the first successful commercial ship is built by Viking."
"My lawyer will nail you down on that wording," I said, "but it's a deal. Is there anything else?"
"No."
"Then I think I'll leave for Ceres before you break a blood vessel."
"You continue to amaze me, Mr. Oak," he said. And the soft oiliness
[10]
of his voice was the oil of vitriol. "Your compassion for your fellowman is a facet of your personality that I had not seen before. I shall welcome the opportunity to relax and allow my blood pressure to subside."
I could almost see Shalimar Ravenhurst suddenly exploding and adding his own touch of color to the room.
And, on that gladsome thought, I left. I let him have his small verbal triumph; if he'd known that I'd have taken on the job for almost nothing, he'd really have blown up.
Ten minutes later, I was in my vacuum suit, walking across the glaring, rough-polished rectangle of metal that was the landing field of Raven's Rest. The sun was near the zenith in the black, diamond-dusted sky, and the shadow of my flitterboat stood out like an inkblot on a bridal gown. I climbed in, started the engine, and released the magnetic anchor that held the little boat to the surface of the nickel-iron planetoid. I lifted her gently, worked her around until I was stationary in relation to the spinning planetoid, oriented myself against the stellar background, and headed toward the first blinker beacon on my way to Ceres.
For obvious economical reasons, it it impracticable to use full-sized spaceships in the Belt. A flitterboat, with a single gravitoinertial engine and the few necessities of life—air, some water, and a very little food—still costs more than a Rolls-Royce
[11]
automobile does on Earth, but there has to be some sort of individual transportation in the Belt.
They can't be used for any great distances because a man can't stay in a vac suit very long without getting uncomfortable. You have to hop from beacon to beacon, which means that your average velocity doesn't amount to much, since you spend too much time accelerating and decelerating. But a flitterboat is enough to get around the neighborhood in, and that's all that's needed.
I got the GM-187 blinker in my sights, eased the acceleration up to one gee, relaxed to watch the radar screen while I thought over my coming ordeal with McGuire.
Testing spaceships, robotic or any other kind, is strictly not my business. The sign on the door of my office in New York says: DANIEL OAK, Confidential Expediter ; I'm hired to help other people Get Things Done. Usually, if someone came to me with the problem of getting a spaceship test-piloted, I'd simply dig up the best test pilot in the business, hire him for my client, and forget about everything but collecting my fee. But I couldn't have refused this case if I'd wanted to. I'd already been assigned to it by someone a lot more important than Shalimar Ravenhurst.
Every schoolchild who has taken a course in Government Organization and Function can tell you that the Political Survey Division is a branch of the System Census Bureau of the UN Government, and that its job is to evaluate the political activities of
[12]
various sub-governments all over the System.
And every one of those poor tykes would be dead wrong.
The Political Survey Division does evaluate political activity, all right, but it is the Secret Service of the UN Government. The vast majority of
[13]
the System's citizens don't even know the Government has a Secret Service. I happen to know only because I'm an agent of the Political Survey Division.
The PSD was vitally interested in the whole McGuire project. Robots of McGuire's complexity had been built before; the robot that runs the traffic patterns of the American Eastern Seaboard is just as capable as McGuire when it comes to handling a tremendous number of variables and making decisions on them. But that robot didn't have to be given orders except in extreme emergencies. Keeping a few million cars moving and safe at the same time is actually pretty routine stuff for a robot. And a traffic robot isn't given orders verbally; it is given any orders that may be necessary via teletype by a trained programming technician. Those orders are usually in reference to a change of routing due to repair work on the highways or the like. The robot itself can take care of such emergencies as bad weather or even an accident caused by the malfunctioning of an individual automobile.
McGuire was different. In the first place, he was mobile. He was in command of a spacecraft. In a sense, he was the spacecraft, since it served him in a way that was analogous to the way a human body serves the human mind. And he wasn't in charge of millions of objects with a top velocity of a hundred and fifty miles an hour; he was in charge of a single object that moved at velocities of thousands of miles per second. Nor
[14]
did he have a set, unmoving highway as his path; his paths were variable and led through the emptiness of space.
Unforeseen emergencies can happen at any time in space, most of them having to do with the lives of passengers. A cargo ship would be somewhat less susceptible to such emergencies if there were no humans aboard; it doesn't matter much to a robot if he has no air in his hull.
But with passengers aboard, there may be times when it would be necessary to give orders— fast ! And that means verbal orders, orders that can be given anywhere in the ship and relayed immediately by microphone to the robot's brain. A man doesn't have time to run to a teletyper and type out orders when there's an emergency in space.
That meant that McGuire had to understand English, and, since there has to be feedback in communication, he had to be able to speak it as well.
And that made McGuire more than somewhat difficult to deal with.
For more than a century, robotocists have been trying to build Asimov's famous Three Laws of Robotics into a robot brain.
First Law: A robot shall not, either through action or inaction, allow harm to come to a human being.
Second Law: A robot shall obey the orders of a human being, except when such orders conflict with the First Law .
[15]
Third Law: A robot shall strive to protect its own existence, except when this conflicts with the First or Second Law.
Nobody has succeeded yet, because nobody has yet succeeded in defining the term "human being" in such a way that the logical mind of a robot can encompass the concept.
A traffic robot is useful only because the definition has been rigidly narrowed down. As far as a traffic robot is concerned, "human beings" are the automobiles on its highways. Woe betide any poor sap who tries, illegally, to cross a robot-controlled highway on foot. The robot's only concern would be with the safety of the automobiles, and if the only way to avoid destruction of an automobile were to be by nudging the pedestrian aside with a fender, that's what would happen.
And, since its orders only come from one place, I suppose that a traffic robot thinks that the guy who uses that typer is an automobile.
With the first six models of the McGuire ships, the robotocists attempted to build in the Three Laws exactly as stated. And the first six went insane.
If one human being says "jump left," and another says "jump right," the robot is unable to evaluate which human being has given the more valid order. Feed enough confusing and conflicting data into a robot brain, and it can begin behaving in ways that, in a human being, would be called paranoia or schizophrenia or catatonia or what-have-you, depending
[16]
on the symptoms. And an insane robot is fully as dangerous as an insane human being controlling the same mechanical equipment, if not more so.
So the seventh model had been modified. The present McGuire's brain was impressed with slight modifications of the First and Second Laws.
If it is difficult to define a human being, it is much more difficult to define a responsible human being. One, in other words, who can be relied upon to give wise and proper orders to a robot, who can be relied upon not to drive the robot insane.
The robotocists at Viking Spacecraft had decided to take another tack. "Very well," they'd said, "if we can't define all the members of a group, we can certainly define an individual. We'll pick one responsible person and build McGuire so that he will take orders only from that person."
As it turned out, I was that person. Just substitute "Daniel Oak" for "human being" in the First and Second Laws, and you'll see how important I was to a certain spaceship named McGuire.
When I finally caught the beam from Ceres and set my flitterboat down on the huge landing field that had been carved from the nickel-iron of the asteroid with a focused sun beam, I was itchy with my own perspiration and groggy tired. I don't like riding in flitterboats, sitting on a
[17]
bucket seat, astride the drive tube, like a witch on a broomstick, with nothing but a near-invisible transite hull between me and the stars, all cooped up in a vac suit. Unlike driving a car, you can't pull a flitterboat over and take a nap; you have to wait until you hit the next beacon station.
Ceres, the biggest rock in the Belt, is a lot more than just a beacon station. Like Eros and a few others, it's a city in its own right. And except for the Government Reservation, Viking Spacecraft owned Ceres, lock, stock, and mining rights.
Part of the reason for Viking's troubles was envy of that ownership. There were other companies in the Belt that would like to get their hands on that plum, and there were those who were doing everything short of cutting throats to get it. The PSD was afraid it might come to that, too, before very long.
Ceres is fifty-eight million cubic miles of nickel-iron, but nobody would cut her up for that. Nickel-iron is almost exactly as cheap as dirt on Earth, and, considering shipping costs, Earth soil costs a great deal more than nickel-iron in the Belt.
But, as an operations base, Ceres is second to none. Its surface gravity averages .0294 Standard Gee, as compared with Earth's .981, and that's enough to give a slight feeling of weight without unduly hampering the body with too much load. I weigh just under six pounds on Ceres, and after I've been there a while, going back to Earth is a strain that takes a
[18]
week to get used to. Kids that are brought up in the Belt are forced to exercise in a room with a one-gee spin on it at least an hour a day. They don't like it at first, but it keeps them from growing up with the strength of mice. And an adult with any sense takes a spin now and then, too. Traveling in a flitterboat will give you a one-gee pull, all right, but you don't get much exercise.
I parked my flitterboat in the space that had been assigned to me by Landing Control, and went over to the nearest air-lock dome.
After I'd cycled through and had shucked my vac suit, I went into the inner room to find Colonel Brock waiting for me.
"Have a good trip, Oak?" he asked, trying to put a smile on his scarred, battered face.
"I got here alive, if that makes it a good flitterboat trip," I said, shaking his extended hand.
"That's the definition of a good trip," he told me.
"Then the question was superfluous. Seriously, what I need is a bath and some sleep."
"You'll get that, but first let's go somewhere where we can talk. Want a drink?"
"I could use one, I guess. Your treat?"
"My treat," he said. "Come on."
I followed him out and down a ladder to a corridor that led north. By definition, any asteroid spins toward the east, and all directions follow from that, regardless of which way the axis may point.
[19]
Colonel Harrington Brock was dressed in the black-and-gold "union suit" that was the uniform of Ravenhurst's Security Guard. My own was a tasteful green, but some of the other people in the public corridor seemed to go for more flashiness; besides silver and gold, there were shocking pinks and violent mauves, with stripes and blazes of other colors.
A crowd wearing skin-tight cover-alls might shock the gentle people of Midwich-on-the-Moor, England, but they are normal dress in the Belt. You can't climb into a vac suit with bulky clothing on, and, if you did, you'd hate yourself within an hour, with a curse for every wrinkle that chafed your skin. And, in the Belt, you never know when you might have to get into a vac suit fast. In a "safe" area like the tunnels inside Ceres, there isn't much chance of losing air, but there are places where no one but a fool would ever be more than ten seconds away from his vac suit.
I read an article by a psychologist a few months back, in which he claimed that the taste for loud colors in union suits was actually due to modesty. He claimed that the bright patterns drew attention to the colors themselves, and away from the base the colors were laid over. The observer, he said, tends to see the color and pattern of the suit, rather than the body it clings to so closely. Maybe he's right; I wouldn't know, not being a psychologist. I have spent summers in nudist resorts, though, and I never noticed anyone painting themselves with lavender
[20]
and chartreuse checks. On the other hand, the people who go to nudist resorts are a self-screened group. So are the people who go to the Belt, for that matter, but the type of screening is different.
I'll just leave that problem in the hands of the psychologists, and go on wearing my immodestly quiet solid-color union suits.
Brock pushed open the inch-thick metal door beneath a sign that said
"O'Banion's Bar," and I followed him in. We sat down at a table and ordered drinks when the waiter bustled over. A cop in uniform isn't supposed to drink, but Brock figures that the head of the Security Guard ought to be able to get away with a breach of his own rules.
We had our drinks in front of us and our cigarettes lit before Brock opened up with his troubles.
"Oak," he said, "I wanted to intercept you before you went to the plant because I want you to know that there may be trouble."
"Yeah? What kind?" Sometimes it's a pain to play ignorant.
"Thurston's outfit is trying to oust Ravenhurst from the managership of Viking and take over the job. Baedecker Metals & Mining Corporation, which is managed by Baedecker himself, wants to force Viking out of business so that BM&M can take over Ceres for large-scale processing of precious metals.
"Between the two of 'em, they're raising all sorts of minor hell around
[21]
here, and it's liable to become major hell at any time. And we can't stand any hell—or sabotage—around this planetoid just now!"
"Now wait a minute," I said, still playing ignorant, "I thought we'd pretty well established that the 'sabotage' of the McGuire series was Jack Ravenhurst's fault. She was the one who was driving them nuts, not Thurston's agents."
"Perfectly true," he said agreeably. "We managed to block any attempts of sabotage by other company agents, even though it looked as though we hadn't for a while." He chuckled wryly. "We went all out to keep the McGuires safe, and all the time the boss' daughter was giving them the works." Then he looked sharply at me. "I covered that, of course. No one in the Security Guard but me knows that Jack was responsible."
"Good. But what about the Thurston and Baedecker agents, then?"
He took a hefty slug of his drink. "They're around, all right. We have our eyes on the ones we know, but those outfits are as sharp as we are, and they may have a few agents here on Ceres that we know nothing about."
"So? What does this have to do with me?"
He put his drink on the table. "Oak, I want you to help me." His onyx-brown eyes, only a shade darker than his skin, looked directly into my own. "I know it isn't part of your assignment, and you know I can't afford to pay you anything near what you're worth. It will have to come out of my
[22]
pocket because I couldn't possibly justify it from operating funds. Ravenhurst specifically told me that he doesn't want you messing around with the espionage and sabotage problem because he doesn't like your methods of operation."
"And you're going to go against his orders?"
"I am. Ravenhurst is sore at you personally because you showed him that Jack was responsible for the McGuire sabotage. It's an irrational dislike, and I am not going to let it interfere with my job. I'm going to protect Ravenhurst's interests to the best of my ability, and that means that I'll use the best of other people's abilities if I can."
I grinned at him. "The last I heard, you were sore at me for blatting it all over Ceres that Jaqueline Ravenhurst was missing, when she sneaked aboard McGuire."
He nodded perfunctorily. "I was. I still think you should have told me what you were up to. But you did it, and you got results that I'd been unable to get. I'm not going to let a momentary pique hang on as an irrational dislike. I like to think I have more sense than that."
"Thanks." There wasn't much else I could say.
"Now, I've got a little dough put away; it's not much, but I could offer you—"
I shook my head, cutting him off. "Nope. Sorry, Brock. For two reasons. In the first place, there would be a conflict of interest. I'm working for Ravenhurst, and if he doesn't want
[23]
me to work for you, then it would be unethical for me to take the job.
"In the second place, my fees are standardized. Oh, I can allow a certain amount of fluctuation, but I'm not a physician or a lawyer; my services are
[24]
not necessary to the survival of the individual, except in very rare cases, and those cases are generally arranged through a lawyer when it's a charity case.
"No, colonel, I'm afraid I couldn't
[25]
possibly work for you."
He thought that over for a long time. Finally, he nodded his head very slowly. "I see. Yeah, I get your point." He scowled down at his drink.
" But ," I said, "it would be a pleasure
[26]
to work with you."
He looked up quickly. "How's that?"
"Well, let's look at it this way: You can't hire me because I'm already working for Ravenhurst; I can't hire
[27]
you because you're working for Ravenhurst. But since we may need each other, and since we're both working for Ravenhurst, there would be no conflict of interest if we co-operate.
"Or, to put it another way, I can't take money for any service I may render you, but you can pay off in services. Am I coming through?"
His broad smile made the scars on his face fold in and deepen. "Loud and clear. It's a deal."
I held up a hand, palm toward him. "Ah, ah, ah! There's no 'deal' involved. We're just old buddies helping each other. This is for friendship, not business. I scratch your back; you scratch mine. Fair?"
"Fair. Come on down to my office; I want to give you a headful of facts and figures."
"Will do. Let me finish my guzzle."
|
What equipment does Star possess and use throughout the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about DEATH STAR by TOM PACE.
Relevant chunks:
DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
Question:
What equipment does Star possess and use throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"When Star’s ship is hit by the electric beam, he has an electron knife with him. And when he heard footsteps coming his way, he holds onto it firmly. When the man gets near the water and sees the ship sink, Star quickly kills him with the electron knife by stabbing right to his heart. He takes the man’s jet-gun with him as well. He is also going to use the jet-gun on the girl, but his great reflexes are able to stop him from doing so, however, she paralyzes him first. After he is knocked out and brought to the cell, he looks for his weapons, but they are all taken by Garrett’s men except one. At the place that execution is supposed to take place, Star kicks the metal fork towards the visual transmitter, which will send signals for help. When Garrett takes them to the machinery room, the girl takes the jet weapon from Garrett, Star uses a tiny jet to shoot Garret right before Garret shot him. While Star’s scalp gets injured, he is able to shoot right at Garret’s vitals with his quickness and alertness, thus making him die almost immediately.",
"Star possesses a jet-gun and an electron blade which he stores on his belt. Additionally, he maintains an additional jet weapon discreetly stored on his person. His primary weapon, the jet-gun, is a deadly weapon, but one which must be reloaded by pressing a loading stuff to slide ammunition into place. His electron blade, stored in a water-proof sheath, is a blade whose full potential is realizable when it is activated. Upon the pressing of its electron stud, the electron blade produces blue fire. The jet weapon, which Star uses to kill Devil Garrett, is slightly smaller than a fountain pen and has thick sides. Star refers to this weapon as his “ace”. \n",
"Some of the equipment that Star uses in the story is supplied by John Hinton, including the ship he flies at the beginning of the story, which is shot down. Aside from the ship, Star possesses several weapons throughout the story, including an electron knife and a gun. Once Star is captured by Garrett, he is stripped of most of his weapons, except for his hidden \"ace card\", which is revealed to be a jet gun concealed in a smaller form. Star also possesses knowledge of transmitters and their functions; because of this, he is able to use Garrett's transmitter to alert the authorities of his location by breaking a unit of the machine that sends a distress signal. ",
"In the beginning, Star uses an electron knife that he keeps in a water-proof covering. The knife produces a blue fire when it is used to stab someone. When Star Blade is about to be executed by the transmitter, he pulls out a metal fork. The metal fork damages the transmitter by striking a small area where there are wires and braces. The metal fork prevents Star from being executed by the transmitter. The last weapon that Star has on him after he has used the previous two is a jet weapon the size of a fountain pen. He uses the jet weapon to kill Garrett. "
] |
63419
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DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
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Who is Garrett and what happens to him in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about DEATH STAR by TOM PACE.
Relevant chunks:
DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
Question:
Who is Garrett and what happens to him in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate for many years, and Star is currently trying to hunt him down. We learn that Garrett has been secretly building machines on Alpha III which, if combine with Hinton ray screens, gives Garrett the power to rule the entire world. A month ago, Garrett captured Anne Hinton and started to pretend that he is Star. He was communicating with Anna’s father about new power processes. Then a month later, Star’s ship gets hit by the energy-beam. However, he survives after his ship fells into the lake, instead he is captured and Garrett wants to execute him. Luckily, he is able to divert Garret’s attention when he is shooting Star, leading him to miss it. Also, since the girl is able to read lips, she realizes that Garrett has been lying to her. She learns Garrett’s true identity as well as Star’s. In the end, as Garrett is showing them his great enterprise and explaining how he will be able to rule the world, he gets careless and Anna takes his weapon. Even though he tries to run, Star is quicker and has better reflexes. Without his weapons, Star easily had him killed.",
"Devil Garrett is the top space pirate, and has been for eight years. Prior to the start of the story, Garrett fires a high-powered Barden energy beam at Starrett Blade’s ship, causing it to crash into a lake on the planet Alpha Centauri III. \nHe confronts the captured Star in the cell, alongside Anne Hinton, the woman responsible for subduing Star. Garrett has been posing as Star and accuses Star of being him, going so far as to forge documents in order to complete his deception of Anne. He plans on executing Star in front of a transmission to Commander Weddel, a police commander. However, the transmission is disrupted when Star throws a piece of metal at the dial board. Star is rendered unconscious once again and returned to his cell.\nAs Star awakens in his cell, Anna reveals that she no longer believes that Garrett is Star. Garrett suddenly enters the room, and, having been found out, leads Star and Anna away to a cavernous chamber housing industrial equipment. He reveals that he is able to hydrolyze water into oxygen and hydrogen, and recombine the two to form massive amounts of energy. Garrett plans on exploiting the vast lakes on Alpha Centauri III to perform these reactions, and to build multiple Barden beams which he will use to take over the planet. \nAs Garrett is revealing his plan however, Star unsheathes a hidden jet weapon and kills him. \n",
"Garrett is an infamous space pirate, wanted by the authorities at a high reward. He is being hunted by Starrett Blade. At the beginning of the story, Garrett shoots down Star's ship and captures him. He is able to convince Anne Hinton and her father that he is actually Starrett Blade, and that the man he captured is actually Garrett. Garrett plans to execute Star, and gets his men to place Star in a cell until then. Once it is time for execution, Garrett is diverted by Star's damage to the transmitter. He admits his plan to Star, confident in his ability to harness power over the planet, but is then killed by Star.",
"Devil Garrett was the number one space pirate for eight years in the void. He has hunted Starrett Blade for the past year. He was infamous because he was a killer. He stood tall at six feet three inches and had incredible strength. He used a high-velocity jet-gun and a set of electron knives as his weapons. \n\nGarrett has Star Blade captured and brought to him. He pretends to the girl on the planet that he is Star Blade and that Star Blade is actually Garrett. He imprisons Star to prevent him from ruining his plans. He tells the real Star that he will be executed. Garrett takes Star on a tour to show him the work that he is accomplishing. He tells Star that he plans to rule the entire world with his work. As he is detailing his plan to Star, Star pulls out a weapon and kills Garrett. As Garrett is dying, he fires his jet-gun at Star but does not kill Star. \n"
] |
63419
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DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about DEATH STAR by TOM PACE.
Relevant chunks:
DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story starts with Starrett (Star) Blade’s ship falling into one of the lakes on Alpha Centauri III. We then learns that Currently Star is trying to hunt Devil Garrett down, but his ship was hit by an energy-beam shot by Garrett, who is the top space pirate for years. After he fell, he hopes that Garrett himself will come here to look for him, but only one of Garrett’s men appears and he is killed by Star. He also notices a person with another gun right after he murders that man. He almost kills this person as well, but is able to stop in time due to his strong reflex skills. The reason that he stopped is because she is a girl. She has beautiful dark colored hair and eyes. But she does not stop trying to capture him. Before he can explain himself, he is knocked out. \n\nWhen Star has finally waken up, he is already in a lab chair with Garrett is right in front of him. To his surprise, Garrett calls him Garrett, instead of Star. The girl clearly believes Garrett that Star is actually Garrett. However, again, before he can explain his situation to the girl, he is knocked out. Right after he wakes up, he learns that he will be executed. Then, he starts thinking of the girl again, but he does not really understand why he is thinking of her. Before he can do anything, he is taken from his cell. Standing 5 yards away from the gun that Garrett is holding, he tries to find a way that he could escape. He is glad to see that it is a two way transmitter, but loses his hope again when he realizes that it is an old-style transmitter. Then as the visual image started to form, Garrett is ready to perform the execution. Star cunningly kicks the metal fork onto the vision transmitter, which diverts Garrett’s attention, and causes him to miss the shot. But because he is outnumbered by Garrett’s men, he is caught and knocked out again. After he wake up, the girl finds him and tells him that she is capable of reading lips. Even though the visual images has no sound, she knows what the Section Void Headquarters said, and that he is the actual Star. \n\nGarrett enters the cell after he finds out that the girl knows the real identity of him and Star. So he brings them to a room filled with machines. He imagines to have hundreds of those on Alpha III and he will be able to rule an entire world. Then suddenly the girl takes Garrett’s weapon and Star is able to kill him very quickly. And Commander Weddel, getting the signal that Star tried to send using the metal fork, gets here just on time to capture Garrett’s men. ",
"Starrett Blade’s ship has crashed into one of the deep stagnant lakes on the surface of Alpha Centauri III, struck down by a Barden energy beam fired by Devil Garrett, a space pirate. Star Blade, ejected to safety and now hiding by the lake, waits for Garrett to come for him. Meanwhile, he wonders about the source of the energy for the Barden Beam, as Garrett doesn’t have power plants on the planet, nor is there running water to generate hydroelectric power. Suddenly, Star notices one of Garrett’s soldiers and ambushes him. \nStar Blade, who has earned the nickname Death Star for his fighting prowess, dispatches his fist adversary, and soon after notices another: a beautiful, dark-haired woman. She confronts him, calling him a pirate. He dismisses this accusation, and asserts his identity, but she does not believe him. A brief fight ensues, but is quickly settled when Star is struck by another combatant.\nAs Star wakes in a cell, he is confronted by Devil Garrett’s face, Garrett’s underlings, and the dark-haired woman. Garrett, who has assumed Star Blade’s identity in order to trick the woman whom he calls Miss Hinton, announces that he will shortly execute Blade, whom he has tricked Hinton into believing is himself. \nStar is brought before a transmitter which only transmits images. As the live image of Commander Weddel, a police officer, appears on the screen, Garrett quickly throws a piece of metal at the transmitter’s dial board and disrupts the transmission. One of Garrett’s men renders Star unconscious. \nStar regains consciousness and finds Hinton in his cell. She reveals that, during the transmission, she was able to read Weddel’s lips and now believes that he is who he claims to be. She introduces herself to be Anne Hinton, daughter of a weapons manufacturer whom Garrett had secretly contacted while posing as Star. Anne tells Star that Garrett has discovered a method of electrolyzing water into its elemental constituents, which Star speculates to be a potential source of energy. \nSuddenly, Garrett enters the room and leads Anne and Star to a cavernous room at gunpoint. The room is full of vats and machinery, which Star concludes are the reaction vessels in which water is electrolyzed and the energy generated. Garrett reveals that his plan is to use his technology to construct many Barden Beams in order to take over the planet. \nStar removes an obscured weapon, and dispatches Devil Garrett. He quickly takes out two more pirates, before two more surrender. Commander Weddel appears, and Star reveals that his damaging the transmitter resulted in a distress signal being sent out.\nThe story concludes with Anna asking how soon the technology discovered by Garrett can be used to bring life to Alpha Centauri III, and her asking him if it would be a good place to honeymoon. \n",
"Starrett Blade, a fighter nicknamed \"Death Star\", has been on the hunt for Devil Garrett, the most dangerous and well-known space pirate. While flying over Alpha Centauri III, a barren and lifeless planet, Star's ship is shot down by a Barden beam, causing him to crash into a lake. Confused as to how such a powerful beam could have been shot on this planet, Star is met with one of Garrett's armed men. Star attacks the man and sees a girl, who he is perplexed by. The girl threatens him, and Star replies by explaining that he's not a pirate, but Death Star. The girl immediately attacks him, knocking him out. Star awakes in a room with the girl, some more men, and face to face with Devil Garrett. To his surprise, Garrett addresses him as the deadly pirate, and calls himself Starrett Blade. Star realizes that Garrett has attempted to swap identities with him, convincing the girl that Garrett was actually the one being captured. Garrett tells Star that he is to be executed, broadcasted to the authorities. Star is knocked out again, this time waking up in a cell and rid of all weapons except for his ace card. Two of Garrett's men enter the cell, and Star attempts to fight them both, which is successful, but his plan is cut short when Garrett steps into the room. Star is led to the execution site, where he stands by a transmitter with Garrett in front of him bearing a gun, the girl next to him. Star inspects the transmitter and realizes that there is a chance the authorities will be able to identify him as the true Star, hopeful that the girl will realize her mistake; however, he concludes that the transmitter's sound wave speed would not be fast enough for the message to come through. As Star faces execution, he flings a fork at the transmitter, damaging a unit of the machine and burning it out. This causes a distraction, and Star is attacked by Garrett's men and falls unconscious again, yet this time accompanied by the girl, who knows now of his true identity due to her ability to read lips on the transmitter. The girl reveals she is Anne Hinton, daughter of John Hinton, who manufactures space equipment. Garrett contacted John, disguising himself as Star to gain his support in crafting hundreds of power plants with Barden beams in order to gain control of the entire planet of Alpha III. Once Garrett reveals his plan, Star uses his ace card, which is a jet weapon, to kill him. Together, Anne and Star fight off Garrett's men, and Star reveals that when he flung the fork at the transmitter, it set off a signal attracting the authorities to their location. With that, Commander Weddel arrives and Garrett's men are turned over to him. Garrett's power plants are then used not for the objective to gain dangerous power, but to supply energy and life to the planet.",
"The story begins with Starrett’s Blade being destroyed and sinking in a body of water. He was able to save himself because of an emergency release that allowed him to be ejected from the air-locked doors. Star is attacked by a man but successfully kills the man with his electron knife. After he kills the man, he sees a girl that distracts him. While he is distracted, he is struck and beaten. When he wakes up after being beaten, he is standing in front of Garrett. Garrett pretends that he is actually Star, for the benefit of the girl, and pretends that Star is actually Garrett. Garret tells Star that he is going to be executed and puts Star into a prison cell.\n\nStar wakes up in his prison cell and is still concerned about what the girl thinks of him. Star fights against the two guards that come to get him from his cell. He stops fighting them when Garrett appears holding an electron knife, as Star sees that as a dangerous weapon. Star is guided towards the transmitter for his planned executive. However, Star thwarts the execution plans by throwing a metal fork at the transmitter which damages it. Again, he gets distracted because of the girl and is beaten. \n\nLater, the girl appears in his cell trying to help him. She tells him that she is Anne Hinton, the daughter of Old John Hinton. Start mentions that he is familiar with her father. Garrett finds the two trying to escape. He leads them down a long corridor and into an incredibly expansive room. Garrett tells them his plan to control the world. Star remembers that he has another weapon at his disposal and uses it to kill Garrett. Anne and Star then go on to kill some of the guards. Commander Weddel shows up to Star’s delight after the Commander received a distress signal from the transmitter. Star is excited about Garrett’s power plant as he exclaims that it will bring life to the barren Centauri planets. \n"
] |
63419
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DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
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What did Garrett do to make the girl believe that he is Star and Star is Garrett?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about DEATH STAR by TOM PACE.
Relevant chunks:
DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
Question:
What did Garrett do to make the girl believe that he is Star and Star is Garrett?
Answer:
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[
"Firstly, a month ago, Garrett pretends to be Star and successfully deceived the girl’s father and was communicating with him about his development on some power processes. And according to the girl, she was captured by Garrett and brought to the craft around a month ago. Note that no one knows what he is really hoping to accomplish by pretending to be Star. Secondly, for the past month, he has been using 3-dimensional images and detailed description of Star as Garrett to make the girl believe his made-up identity. This also finishes successfully and the girl was sure that Star was Garrett, Garret as Star. Thirdly, during the execution, Garrett uses the delay in voice from the visual images to make sure that the girl will not be able to hear anything that the Section Void Headquarters would say when they see Garrett murdering Star. But he lets her see the images so that when their faces are filled with surprises to see Star being captured, the visual images will lead the girl to believe that they are shocked because they see Garret. However, this part of the plan failed. The girl is able to read lips, thus from the visuals, she knows exactly what the headquarters are saying. Hence she learns the truth of Garrett and Star’s identity. She also learns that he has been lying to him and her father. ",
"Prior to meeting the girl, Anne Hinton, Devil Garrett, the top space pirate, had contacted Anne’s father Old John Hinton while posing as Starrett Blade. Garrett’s deception of Anne is furthered by his forgery of certain documents, including papers describing Garrett as having Star’s description, and a three-dimensional picture. \nHis deception, however, is foiled during a transmission between the pirate and Police Commander Weddel which was meant to broadcast Star’s execution. During the silent broadcast, Weddel’s mouth moves and Anne is able to read his lips, coming to believe that Star is who he claims to be. \n",
"To make Anne believe that Garrett is Star and Star is Garrett, Garrett communicated with her father, posing as Star and claiming that he was interested in working with him to develop power plants. John Hinton, who supplies Star with much of his equipment, agreed to work with Garrett. Anne has been staying with Garrett for a month, during which he showed her fake papers and photos that supported his lie. Once Anne met Star for the first time, she was under the belief that Garrett was actually Star. Because of this, she immediately thought that Star was lying when he shared his name, and was able to help bring him to Garrett. ",
"Garrett made the girl believe that he was Star and that Star was Garrett because he provided her with papers that he claimed showed a picture of Garrett with a description. The picture was in fact one of Star Blade. In addition, he had his guards pretend that he was Star Blade too. However, unlike the girl, the guards knew that he was actually Garrett. He made the girl fear Star Blade (pretending Star was actually Garrett) by telling the girl that Star was a horrible pirate that killed many people and had to be executed. In addition, the girl’s father communicated with Garrett while he was pretending to be Star. This is another reason she thought she could trust him. "
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63419
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DEATH STAR
By TOM PACE
Trapped by the most feared of space pirates Devil Garrett, Starrett Blade was fighting for his life. Weaponless, his ship gone, he was pinning his hopes on a girl—who wanted him dead.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1945. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Starrett Blade crouched in the rocks by the tiny Centaurian lake. It was only about two or three hundred feet across, but probably thousands of feet deep. This lake, and hundreds of others like it, were the only things to break the monotony of the flat, rocky surface of Alpha Centauri III—called the most barren planet in space.
Ten minutes ago, Star Blade's ship had spun into the stagnant waters before him. An emergency release had flung the air-lock doors open, and the air pressure had flung Star out. And now he was waiting for Devil Garrett to come down to the water's edge to search for him.
For eight years, Devil Garrett had been the top space pirate in the void. For a year, Star himself had personally been hunting him. And on a tour over Alpha III, a Barden energy-beam had stabbed up at Blade's ship, and Star Blade had crashed into the lake.
That Barden Beam had Star worried and puzzled. It took a million volts of power for a split-second flash of the beam. Garrett didn't have an atomics plant on Alpha III—if he had, escaping rays would point it out, no matter how well it was camouflaged. There was no water power, for there was no running water. There were only the lakes ... and tidal power was out, for Alpha III had no moon.
However, that could wait. Star slid the electron knife from his water-proof sheath, gripped it firmly. He could hear quick footsteps as a man came down the trail that led directly past his hiding place.
It wasn't Garrett, which was disappointing. But it was one of his men, and he was heavily armed. That didn't worry Star.
His fighting had earned Starrett Blade the nickname of "Death Star."
The man walked to the water's edge, and peered out over the pool. He saw the bubbles that were coming up from the sinking ship, and he nodded, grunted in satisfaction, and started to turn back.
Star landed on him, knocking him sprawling on the rock. The pirate jerked up an arm, holding the jet-gun.
The stabbing lance of blue fire cracked from the electron knife, dug into the man's heart.
Star tossed the dead pirate's cloak over his shoulders, and thrust both electron blade and jet-gun into his belt. He straightened, and saw the leveled gun from the corner of his eye.
He got the jet in his right hand, the knife in his left, and went into a dive that flipped him behind a rock. The three actions took only a split-second, and the blast from the jet-gun flaked rock where he had been standing.
While a jet-gun is the most deadly weapon known, you have to press a loading stud to slide another blast-capsule into place. Death Star knew this very well. So he knew he was safe in coming up from behind the spur of stone to fire his own gun.
If his reflexes hadn't been as quick as they were, he would have blasted the girl.
He stopped, and stood for a second, staring at the girl. She was something to invite stares, too. In the moment that lasted between her next move, he had time to register that she was about five feet five tall, black-haired—the kind of black hair that looks like silken spun darkness—dark-eyed, and possessing both a face and a form that would make anyone stop and gulp.
Then the moment of half-awed survey was over, and she leveled the jet on him, and said in a trembling voice, "Drop those weapons, or I'll blast you ... pirate !"
Death Star said, "That jet-gun is empty. I can see the register on the magazine. And I'm not a pirate. I'm Starrett Blade."
The useless jet-gun slid out of the girl's hand, and she gave a half-gasp. "Starrett Blade! I—I don't believe ..." she broke off abruptly. "So you're Death Star! A fine story for a hired killer, a pirate."
Star reddened. "Look," he snapped, "I don't know who's been talking to you, but ..." he whirled, and his hand whipped the jet-gun from his belt. As he did so, the girl jerked up the jet-gun she had dropped, and flung it with all her strength. The blow landed on his arm and side, and paralyzed him long enough for the man who had leaped out behind him to land a stunning blow against his head. As Star went down, he dizzily cursed himself for becoming interested in the argument with the girl, so that he did not heed his reflexes in time ... and dimly, he wondered why it had seemed so important to convince the lovely dark-haired girl.
Then a bit of the cosmos seemed to fall on Star's head, and he was hurled into blackness.
An eternity seemed to pass.
Deep in the blackness, a light was born. It leaped toward him, a far-away comet rocketing along, coming from some far, unknown corner of the galaxy. It became a flaming sun in a gray-green space, and strangely, there seemed to be several odd planets circling about the sun. Some of them were vast pieces of queer electronic machinery. Some were vague, villainous-looking men. One was the dark-haired girl, and there was lovely contempt in her dark-star pools of eyes.
Then into the midst of this queer universe, there swam a new planet. It was the face of a man, and the man was Devil Garrett.
That brought Star up, out of his daze, onto his feet as though he had been doused with cold water. He stood there, not staring, just looking at Garrett.
The most famous killer in the void was big. He was six feet three, and twice as strong as he looked. He wore a huge high-velocity jet-gun, and a set of electron knives, all of the finest workmanship. He was sitting on a laboratory chair of steel, and the chair bent slightly under his great weight.
He smiled at Star, and there was a touch of hell in the smile. He said,
"Ah, Mr. Garrett."
Star's jaw dropped. "Garrett? What do you—" he broke off. A glance at the girl told him what the purpose was.
"Look, Mr. Devil Garrett," said the pirate, still smiling softly, "Miss Hinton is aware of your identity. There is no need to attempt to fool us.... I've known it was you ever since I flashed that beam at your ship. And you needn't flatter yourself that the Devil's luck is going to hold out as far as you are concerned. For in a very short while, I'm going to have you executed ... before a stellar vision screen, connected with Section Void Headquarters! I wish the authorities to see Devil Garrett die, so that I might collect the reward that is offered on you!"
Star stood quiet, and looked straight into Garrett's eyes. After a minute of silence, Garrett's lips twisted into a smile, and he said mockingly, "Well, pirate? What are you thinking of?"
Star said, in a low, cold voice, "I'm thinking of putting an electron fire-blade into your face, Devil Garrett!"
Garrett laughed ... huge, rather evil, bluff laughter. The mirth of a person who is both powerful and dangerous. And then the girl leaped forward, shaking with rage.
"You beast! Murderer! To accuse this man ... you fool, you might have been able to complete any scheme of escape you had, if you hadn't called yourself Starrett Blade! Mr. Blade...." She gestured toward Garrett, who made a mocking, sardonic bow. "... has given me ample proof that he is who he says! And this long before you came. He's shown me papers giving a description and showing a tri-dimension picture of you...."
Fire leaped in Star's eyes. "Listen ..." he snapped furiously, as he started to step forward. Then Garrett made a signal with his hand, and someone drove a fist against the base of Star's skull.
When Star came to, he was in a cell of sorts. A man standing by the door told him that he was to be executed, "... after Mr. Blade and the lady have eaten." Starrett swore at him, and the man went out, with a mocking "Goodbye, Mr. Garrett!"
Star got up. His head spun, and he almost fell at first, but the daze left in his head from the two blows quickly cleared away. He felt for various weapons which he had hidden about him ... and found them gone. Garrett's men had searched carefully.
Star sat down, his head spinning more now from mystery than from physical pain. He had to keep himself in a whole skin, of course. That was most important right now. But other things were bothering him, tugging at his mind like waves slapping around a swamped ship, each trying to shove it in a different direction.
There was the girl. Star wondered why she always leaped into his mind first. And there was the way Garrett was trying to leave the impression that he was Blade, so that he could kill Blade as Garrett.
Obviously, the reason for that was the girl, Miss Hinton, Garrett had called her. She had been shown faked papers by Garrett, papers proving that the two were ... were whatever Garrett had twisted the story into!
Star clutched at his head. He was in a mess. He was going to be killed, and he was going to die without knowing the score. And he didn't like that. Nor did he like dying as Star Blade shouldn't die; executed as a "wolf's-head" pirate. The girl would be watching, and he felt as if that would make it far worse.
His head came up, and he smiled flintily. He still had an ace card! One hand felt for it, and he shook his head slowly. It was a gamble ... but all the others had been found.
Blade looked up quickly, as the door opened. Two men came into the cell, carrying jet-guns. They motioned Blade to his feet. "Come on, Blade." One began, when the other hit him across the mouth.
"You fool!" he hissed. "You better not call him that; suppose that girl was to hear it? Until the boss gets what he wants on Earth, that girl has got to think that he's Blade! We're killing this guy as Devil Garrett! And a loud-mouthed fool like you ... look out!"
Blade had landed on the bickering men, and was grappling with the one who had called him by name. As the other leaped forward, swinging a clubbing blow with a jet-gun, Star tripped one man into the corner, and ducked under the gun. He hit the man in the stomach, drove a shoulder up under his arms, and smashed the man's face in with a series of sharp blows. The man went reeling backward across the room, and Star's hand leaped toward that "ace card" which he still held.
Devil Garrett stepped in the door, and made a mock out of a courteous bow. As he did so, Star snarled in rage, but stood very still, for the electron knife in Garrett's hand did not waver.
Garrett gestured silently toward the door, and Star, equally silent, walked over and out, at the point of the weapon.
Star Blade stood before a transmitter, and thought about death.
He was very close to it. Garrett stood five yards away, a gun in his hand, and the muzzle trained on Blade's chest. The gun was the universally used weapon of execution, an old projectile-firing weapon.
Star did not doubt that Devil Garrett was an excellent shot with it.
The girl, very round-eyed and nervous, sat by Garrett. He had explained to her that Garrett was the type of pirate that it is law to kill, or have executed, by anyone. Which was very true.
A man stepped away from the transmitter, and nodded to Garrett. Star felt a surge of hope, as he saw that it was a two-way transmitter. If the image of an Interstellar Command headquarters was tuned in—Garrett would undoubtedly do it, if only to show the police that he had killed Starrett Blade—then Garrett could not kill him and cut the beam in time to prevent one of the police from giving a cry that would echo over the sub-space beam arriving almost instantly in this room, and let the girl know that she had been tricked. And Garrett would not want that. Not that it would matter to Starrett Blade.
Then Star saw what kind of a transmitter it was, and he groaned. It was not a Hineson Sub-space beamer ... it was an old-style transmitter which had different wave speeds, because of the different space-bridger units in it.
The visual image would arrive many seconds before the sound did. Thus the girl would not hear Garrett revealed, but would see only Blade's death. And then ... whatever Garrett had planned, Blade wished heartily that he could have the chance to interfere.
The beam was coming in. Star saw the mists swimming on the screen change, solidify into a figure ... the figure of District Commander Weddel seated at a desk. He saw Weddel's eyebrows rise, saw his lips move—then Garrett stepped over a pace, and Weddel saw him, saw the gun in his hand....
The police officer yelled, silently, and came to his feet, an expression of shocked surprise on his face—surprise, Blade thought desperately, that the girl might interpret as shock at seeing Devil Garrett.
Which was right, in a way.
Then, as Commander Weddel leapt to his feet, as Devil Garrett's finger tightened on the trigger, as the girl sucked in her breath involuntarily, Star Blade scooped up a bit of metal—a fork—and flung it at the vision transmitter.
Not at the screen. But at the equipment behind the dial-board. At a certain small unit, which was almost covered by wires and braces for the large tubes. And the fork struck it, bit deep, and caused result.
Result in the form of a burned-out set. If television equipment can curse, that set cursed them. Its spitting of sparks and blue electric flame mingled with a strange, high-pitched whine.
It was the diversion that caused Garrett to miss Star, which gave him time to pull three or four of Garrett's men onto the floor with him. One of the men drove the butt of a jet-gun into the side of Star's head, and for the third time, he went very limp. The last thing he saw was the girl.
Somehow, the expression on her face was different from what it had been. He was searching for the difference, when the blow struck him. Somewhere in the space that lies between consciousness and unconsciousness, he reflected bitterly that if he kept staring at the girl when he should be fighting, he might not recover some day. This was the third time that he had been knocked out that way. It was not getting monotonous. He still felt it a novelty.
Star awoke in the same prison cell, facing the wall away from the door. He wondered if he were still alive, tried to move his head, and decided that he wasn't. He didn't even get up or look around when he dimly heard the door being opened.
But when he heard the girl's voice, he came up and around very swiftly, despite his head.
It was the girl all right. Even through the tumbled mists of his brain, he could see that she was not a dream. And as he reeled and fell against the wall, she was beside him in a flash, her arm supporting him.
At first he tried to push himself erect, his head whirling with sick dizziness, and bewilderment. Through a twisting haze, he peered up at the girl's face. It reflected a look that, amazingly, was one of—with no other phrase to do—compassion. Star half-sighed, and laid his head on the girl's breast, and closed his eyes.
In a minute or two, she said tensely, "Are you all right?" Star looked up at her.
"I guess so. Here—give a hand while I get my balance." She held him as he tried a step or two, and then he straightened. "I guess I'll be all right, now," he smiled. "My head feels like—say! How come you're doing this? What made you change your mind? And who are you?"
She said quickly, breathlessly, "I know you're Star Blade, now. That transmission set.... I can read lips! I knew what that officer was saying! It was just as if I had heard him say that ... that you were Starrett Blade and that man out there is Devil Garrett!" she made a choking sound. "And I've been here, alone, for a month! For a month!"
"A month? Huh—please—you...?"
Star took a breath, and started over. "You.... Who are you? What are you doing here?"
She said, "I'm Anne Hinton. My father is Old John Hinton. Have you heard of him?"
"Of course!" said Star. "He manufactures most of the equipment ' Blade Cosmian ' uses. Weapons, Hineson Sub-Spacers, Star-Traveler craft ... the ship I was in when Garrett brought me down was a Hinton craft. I should have recognized the name. But go on. What—"
"Garrett communicated with dad, secretly. He posed as Starrett Blade, as you, and told dad that he was developing certain new power processes. And he is! He has a new—or maybe it isn't so new—way of electrolyzing water to liberate hydrogen and oxygen."
"I think I understand," said Star quickly. "When the oxygen and hydrogen are allowed to combine, and produce an explosion which drive a turbine-generator. Then that could be hitched up to a cyclotron, and even the most barren of Alpha's lake-rock planets could be...."
"No," she shook her head puzzledly. "It's just electric power. He said that atomics would release stray rays that would attract pirates."
"I know," Star nodded, abstractedly. "I was thinking of another application of it ... hmm. But say! What was Garrett after? I know that he wouldn't do this just to get a secret process sold. He must have had another plan behind it. Got any idea?"
Anne shook her head slowly. "I don't know. I can't see...."
"Perhaps I could help you?" Devil Garrett asked smoothly from the door.
Star whirled, thrust Anne behind him, but there was no way out. Garrett stood in the door, and there were men behind him. The jet in his hand could kill both of the two at one shot. And they had no weapons to resist with.
Devil Garrett stepped them out of the room, and down the corridor, through a large door Star had noticed at the end of the passage, and into a huge room.
It must have been a thousand feet long, and half that wide. It was at least a hundred yards deep. And it was almost filled with gigantic machines.
Between the machinery, the spaces were almost filled with steel ladders and cat-walks. Crews of men swarmed over them. It was the largest mass of equipment Starrett had ever seen.
His eyes began to pick out details. Those huge vat-like things down at the far end, with the large cables running into them, and the mighty pumps connected to them ... they were probably the electrolysis chambers.
And those great pipes, they must carry the hydrogen and oxygen from the electro chambers to the large replicas of engines, which could be nothing else but the explosion chambers, where the gases were allowed to re-unite, and explode. And there by the giant engines, those must be turbines, which in turn connected with the vast-sized generators just under the platforms on which they stood.
Star Blade whistled softly through his teeth. A huge enterprise! It could be ... but for a moment he had forgotten Devil Garrett.
The girl standing by his side, Star turned toward Garrett. "Well?"
Garrett smiled his mocking grin. "You grasp the principle, of course. But let me show you ... you see those pipes that run from the turbines after the wheels?"
"Yes. They carry the gases off. Where do they lead?"
"Into giant subterranean caverns beneath the surface!" Garrett said.
"Now look over there, on the platforms across from us. Can you recognize a Barden energy-beamer, Blade? Run by power from my little plant here, which is run by water from a thousand lakes!
"Just imagine, if you can, hundreds of those plants all over Alpha III. And each one with dozens of high-powered Barden beams to protect it! And Hinton ray screens to protect us from radio-controlled rocket shells from space, or Barden Rays, or any other weapon of offence, or to warn if anyone lands on this planet!" Garrett leaned forward, his eyes aglow.
"Blade, I'll take over the few governing posts on this little planet, and I'll rule an entire world, a whole planet to myself! It'll be the first time in history! And it won't be the last. With the Hinton secret patents, the plans of all John Hinton's inventions and processes...."
Star twisted, and got his "ace card" out of its hiding place.
It was a jet weapon, little more than a jet-blast capsule for a jet-gun. The sides were thicker and stronger, and there was a device fixed on it so it could be fired. Altogether, it was somewhat smaller than an old-style fountain pen.
He twisted up from the floor, and moved faster than he had moved ever before. Star was famous for his speed and the quickness and alertness of his reflexes. He earned his fame a score of times over in that one instant.
And Devil Garrett died.
There was perhaps an eighth of a second between the staff of blue white fire from the tiny jet in Star's hand and the huge broadsword of fire from Garrett's gun. But in the split-second Star's fire knifed into Garrett's vitals, and Garrett gave a convulsive jerk, and fired even as his muscles started the jerking movement.
And the flame went over Star's head, singeing his scalp.
Of the four men with Garrett, one let go of the struggling Anne, and swore as he snatched at an electron knife in his belt. Anne's hand had already whipped the knife out, and without bothering to press the electron stud, she buried the knife in his back.
Two of the remaining men whirled, and went for the door as though a devil was after them. The other tried to get a jet-gun out. It was his final mistake. A blue lance from Anne's knife whipped close enough to him to make him dodge, and then Star got his hand on Garrett's jet.
The other two men had, in their flight, taken a door which led, not into the large corridor, but into a small room at one side, a room filled with instruments and recording devices for the machinery in the room below. Star leaped to the side of the door, and called, "Are you going to come out, or am I coming in to get you?"
There was a short silence, in which Anne heard one say hoarsely, "He can't get us ... we could get him if he came in the door."
"Oh, yes?" was the answer. "Do you know who that guy is? He's the one they call 'Death Star.' I'm not facing Starrett Blade in a gun fight. You can do what you like, but I'm leaving." Then he lifted his voice.
"Hey, Blade! I'm coming out. Don't shoot."
"Okay," threw back Star and the man appeared in the doorway, empty hands held high. After a second, the other joined him.
Anne turned to Star. "Now I know why they call you 'Death Star' Blade," she said, and gestured toward the men who had surrendered, and the two whom Starrett had shot down.
He mused there for a minute. Then Anne broke the silence with, "Star, what are we going to do now? Garrett's men will be up here in a little while. We can't get to a sub-space beam. What are we going to do when they come up to investigate?"
Starrett Blade laughed. "Do? Well, we could turn them over to Commander Weddel!"
" What? "
Grinning broadly, Star pointed, with a flourish, at the door. Anne spun about, and found Commander Weddel grinning in the door from the corridor.
"Very simple," said Star across the lounge to Anne. "When I smashed the vision set with that dinner fork, I broke a small unit which is included in all sets. You know, a direction finder doesn't work, except in the liner-beam principle, in space, because of the diffusing effect of unrestricted cosmic rays."
"Yes, I knew that," said Anne. "But how—"
Starrett grinned again. "A type of beam has been found which it is impossible for cosmics to disturb. But you can't send messages on it, so it is made in a little unit on every set. If that unit is broken, the set automatically releases a signal beam. This is a distress signal, and the location of the set that sent out the signal is recorded at the Section Headquarters. When Commander Weddel saw me throw something at the set, and it went dead, he looked at the automatic record, and found out that a signal had been sent in from a location on Alpha Cen's third planet. Then he had a high-velocity cruiser brought out and dropped in, in time to pick up some pieces." He stopped, and idly toyed with a sheaf of papers, then held them up. "See these papers?"
"Uh-huh. What are they, Star?"
"They are the main plans of Devil Garrett's power plant, and they're the one good thing he's ever done. These plans are going to bring the barren, rocky Centauri planets to life!"
He got up, and paced to the window, and stood there, looking out, and up through the plastic port. "The planets of Centauri!" he murmured softly. "Seven circling Alpha alone. And all seven are barren, rocky, level except for the thousands of lakes ... lakes that are going to be the life of Centauri!"
He turned back to the window. "And all because a pirate named Devil Garrett built a vast power plant to use to garner more power!"
"You know, Anne, as a mockery, and a warning, I think I'll propose that this planet be officially named ... 'Garrett'!"
She looked up at him, and there was laughter bright in her eyes, and tugging at her mouth. "Yes, there ought to be a reason," she murmured. Star wavered. She was so darn close.
After a minute, she turned her head, and looked up at him. "Star, how soon will there be those gardens and woods you described? I mean, how long before Garrett can be turned into that kind of world you described?"
"Why ... under pressure, we can do it in six months. Why?"
"Not half quick enough," she murmured happily, "but it'll have to do, Star." Laughing, she turned her face up to his. "Have you ever thought that planet Garrett will be wonderful for a honeymoon?"
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What effect does Kane's violent drinking outburst have on the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Snare by Richard Rein Smith.
Relevant chunks:
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
Question:
What effect does Kane's violent drinking outburst have on the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Ed and Kane go to the kitchen and start to sample random bottles and foods. Kane finds a brown bottle filled with a strong liquid. The artificial intelligence explains that it is a liquor intended to mimic something like what the alien race presumed would be created on Earth. He starts to drink it and soon becomes intoxicated. He starts to punch himself and then beats his head against the wall. His knuckles become bloody and he gets a bruise on his head. The computer asks him not to hurt himself, as its masters will be disappointed if they arrive in the alien world injured. The computer has no way to physically interfere with the crew. This hatches an idea in Kane's mind. If the computer arrives with a damaged or even dead crew, then the machine will have failed its assignment. He threatens to kill the entire crew, which would mean that the machine would arrive on the planet empty handed. He offers the machine an alternative. If it drops them back on Mars, then it will not have really failed, because the only way to truly fail would be to arrive with a dead crew. Additionally, if the machine stayed on the Moon's surface, it might have an opportunity to pick up another crew in the future. This plan is all due to a whiskey-like substance. ",
"Kane's violent drinking outburst initially causes him to punch the wall with his fist, causing him to bleed. This causes the machine to respond by pleading with Kane, revealing that its masters ordered it to bring the humans to them unscathed. This revelation about the machine's conditions inspires Kane further, and the next morning, he constructs a plan to get the group off the ship. Still intoxicated, Kane ties up the group, and uses violence against Ed to get the machine to free them. Thus, Kane's outburst, though chaotic and violent, ultimately led to the group's freedom.",
"Kane’s violent drinking outburst helps him think of a solution to force the machine to let them go back to the Moon. He initially does not know what to do, but he notices the machine does not want the human passengers getting injured when it desperately tells him to stop beating against the wall. This reaction helps him formulate a plan, and he decides to tie Ed, Verana, and even his wife Marie up. He tries to explain to Ed that the machine is afraid of displeasing its masters, which is why he has found the solution to their problem. His plan, therefore, is to threaten to kill all of them until the machine turns the ship around. He puts it into motion, and it scares the machine enough that it works to convince it to let them go back. ",
"Due to Kane's drinking outburst the machine agrees to return to the Moon. The situation seems to have no solution, but as promised, Kane finds one. If he wasn't drunk, this wouldn't occur him, he wouldn't have enough determination. But Kane's aggressive nature together with alcohol have made him violent enough to make this scene. The machine is confused and doesn't know what to do, Kane's move is clever and he urges the machine to return. This saves the group from being held on an alien planet but it also scares everyone in the group and puts Ed in danger. This action prevents the group from meeting aliens."
] |
49901
|
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Snare by Richard Rein Smith.
Relevant chunks:
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Ed, along with his wife Verana, and their friends Kane, Miller and Marie are out for a walk on the surface of the Moon. They live there, working in the lunar city. They come across a spherical object, about 2 miles in diameter. Miller, a mineralogist, declares that the metal must be at least a few thousand years old. A circular door opens, revealing a small room inside. Kane enters the room. The rest of the group decide to join Kane, but as Miller tries to cross the threshold, he is thrown back. The door shuts behind the group and they are trapped inside. The group try to intercom back to Miller, and then radio back to Lunar City, but all they get is static. The group realise that they are flying through outer space. An inner door opens to reveal a passageway. They arrive at a dead end at the end of the passageway. Just then, a door opens to the right of Kane, an invisible force pushing him into a separate room, and locking the entrance behind him. Marie, his wife is lifted up and placed into a separate chamber. Ed and Verana search the corridor, the remaining doors opening for them. The couple wander around the rooms for eating, sleeping, recreation, bathing and an observatory. A few minutes later, they are joined by Marie and Kane. The two relay how they were told that this ship belongs to an Alien race which arrived on Earth thousands of years ago, and wanted to study humans once they gained the ability of space flight. They mean no harm and want to take them to their planet to study them. They are met by the voice of a faceless artificial intelligence controlling the ship. It informs them there is no way to turn it's course around. The group search the rooms for tools for escape, but soon realise that there is nothing. Kane tries to think of a solution to their problem. Kane starts to drink a liquid like whiskey, which makes him intoxicated. Kane begins to beat himself up. The machine tells him to stop, and that if it arrives with a damaged crew, it's masters will be disappointed. The machine informs the crew that it has no way to physically interact with or restrain them. *blank* brings Kane to his bunker and goes back to his wife to go to sleep. They wake up later, all tied to chairs in the \"kitchen\". Kane has knocked them out in their sleep and restrained them. Kane starts to choke Ed, asking the machine what will happen if the ship arrives to the alien world, and all the crew are dead. The machine would have failed its assignment. Kane proposes that if the machine takes them back to the Moon, then the computer will not have failed, and it might have the chance again to pick up a crew. The machine agrees and takes them on a course for the Moon. ",
"Mankind has moved from Earth and lived on the Moon for over a year. One evening, Ed and his wife Verana, along with Miller, Harry Kane and his wife Marie, decide to take a leisurely stroll on the Moon's surface. As they walk along the path, they stumble upon a strange large object, a spherical figure of metal that, according to Kane, an experienced mineralogist, was several thousand years old. As the group examines the object, they notice an opening forming on its surface. Kane climbs through the opening and convinces the rest of the group to follow him. As Miller climbs through the opening, he is suddenly pushed back onto the ground as the opening shuts, locking the four inside the object. They soon lose connection in their intercoms and realize that the static they hear is due to the fact that the object is beginning to move through outer space. Another door opens, revealing a long corridor, and Ed and the group take off their spacesuits, taking in the oxygen. As they reach the end of the corridor, two doors open as Marie and Kane are shoved into separate rooms. Ed and Verana, now alone, walk back down the corridor where six rooms are open, finding strange food, games, and an observatory. Marie returns in a trance, saying that a telepathic voice had reached out to her in the room and searched her memories. Kane walks in shortly after, enraged, explaining that aliens had taken the group captive after planting the object on the Moon as a booby trap; they are to be on the ship for six months and be experimented on as members of the human race. Kane suggests that the group find a way to take control of the ship, when a mysterious voice fills the room, discouraging him. The voice explains that it is a machine located in the ship, and that its masters want to study the group to fulfill their curiosity about humans. After searching the entirety of the rooms open to them, the group gives up, and Ed and Kane meet in the kitchen while their wives are asleep. Kane comes across a bottle of alcohol, and becomes intoxicated, growing increasingly violent. When he punches the wall, the machine asks him not to hurt himself, as its masters do not want the humans to arrive damaged. The next morning, Ed, Verana, and Marie awake tied to chairs in the kitchen, as Kane walks in, still drunk. Kane has a plan to make the machine let the group go; he strangles Ed, causing the machine to plead, and Kane gives the machine an ultimatum: return the group back to the Moon or bring the group to its masters, dead. The machine agrees to return the group to the Moon just before Ed loses consciousness.\n",
"Ed and his crew are traveling across the Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity) on the Moon. They see a smooth metal object protruding from the surface and go closer to investigate. The object looks foreign, and Ed wants to call the Lunar City authorities. However, Kane stops him and says this could be an opportunity to become famous. Ed agrees with Kane’s idea, and Miller explains that the strange object was made thousands of years ago from an even stronger alloy than steel. The crew goes into the steel object through an opening, where Kane tells his wife, Marie, he sees gadgets for controls and weird drawings. Marie climbs through the passage, and Ed helps his wife Verana too. He tries to help Miller through the opening, but an invisible force suddenly pushes Miller out of view. Ed strikes an invisible wall and realizes that the door has closed on them. Suddenly, the lights turn on, and Kane tasks Miller with opening the door from the outside. Miller’s breath disappears soon after, and Ed tries to dial Lunar City but only hears static. They decide to explore the area, and a force suddenly shoves Kane through a door that closes behind him. Only Verana and Ed are left behind. Both of them are scared, and they go through the corridor again to see six open doors. They go into the nearest door and find containers alongside some drawings. Verana recognizes the strange containers as food, and they taste some of it. After exploring, they enter an observatory, where Marie joins them shortly after. She says that something spoke to her telepathically. Kane comes in angrily, and he exclaims that this ship is the booby-trap of a race from another galaxy. The trip is six months long, and a voice suddenly tells them that there is no chance they can bring the ship back to the Moon. The voice is a machine that is part of the ship, and it says that its masters are only curious about humans. The crew does not believe the voice, but they give up after five hours of fruitless searching. Kane gets drunk and has a violent outburst, which causes the machine to plead with him to stop because it will displease its alien masters. The next morning, Ed awakens to him, Marie, and Verana being tied in chairs by Kane. Kane then chokes Ed to show the machine that he is willing to kill everybody on this ship if it does not go back. He bargains with the machine and says that the alien masters will not learn about its failure to deliver live human cargo. The machine agrees to bring them back to the Moon. Kane lets go of Ed’s throat to triumphantly tell him that there is always a solution, while Ed is just happy to breathe again. ",
"A group of people are walking through a desert on the Moon when they discover a strange object which reminds a part of a sphere. The group decides to explore the object themselves to become wealthy and famous in case it's something important. The party finds a hole and gets inside the sphere. Suddenly, the door closes and leaves Miller, a feeble mineralogist outside. The group tries calling Lunar City but the radio is static as if they were in outer space.Then another door opens revealing a corridor and the party goes there, removing the helmets and breathing normally. Then another door opens and closes after Kane. Marie disappears behind another door in the same way. Ed and Verana are left alone, they are scared, so, when other doors open, Ed walks them both into the nearest one. One room follows another and in the end the couple sits down in an observatory and is soon joined by Marie. The least tells about a telepathic voice searching through her memories and calming her down. When Kane joins, he is angry about being guinea pigs. He explains that they are an experiment for aliens watching Earth develop for thousands of years already. Now the party is trapped and taken to an alien planet for study. While they are discussing the possibility of escape, the ship talks to them and says they can't escape but won't be harmed. It says the aliens are simply curious in examining people. After a full search the group gives up the idea to harm the ship or escape. The women go to sleep and the men are drinking in the kitchen. Ed is calm and curious, while Kane gets even more mad and aggressive than before. Ed drags Kane to the sleeping compartment and leaves with Marie. Ed goes to sleep with his wife. In the night Kane drags all three to the kitchen and ties them to chairs where they wake up. Kane plans to return home by any means and starts tightening his fingers around Ed's throat to make the machine act. After some thinking, the machine decides to return and Kane is proud of his success. "
] |
49901
|
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
|
What are Ed and Verana's relationship to each other?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Snare by Richard Rein Smith.
Relevant chunks:
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
Question:
What are Ed and Verana's relationship to each other?
Answer:
|
[
"Ed and Verana are husband and wife. They live together in \"Lunar City, on the Moon, and have for the past year. Together, they're friends with the rest of the group. After Marie climbs into the star ship, Ed asks Verana if she wants to go in. They act as a team, always doing everything together. They are left in the passageway alone after Kane and Marie are taken. Ed holds Verana's hand as they walk down the corridor, a sign of affection. They explore the ship together first, always working together, discovering the meaning of the instructive drawings and the purpose of the different rooms. They sleep together in the same pod. ",
"Ed and Verana are husband and wife; the two have a pleasant dynamic and get along well. Before entering the strange object, the two ask each other if they want to go in, rather than trying to convince the other. When the two are left alone after Marie and Kane are taken into separate rooms, they work together to investigate the rest of the corridor and try to piece together bits of information cooperatively. Ed describes Verana as having an inner calmness and peacefulness, noting that it is a unique aspect of her personality. The two are similar in their rational approaches to the situation. ",
"Ed and Verana are married to each other. They get along well, and the two of them often stick together. Verana can stay calm in many situations because of an inner serenity that few people possess. On the other hand, Ed also tries to keep calm in most situations but gets nervous if it is potentially dangerous to him or his wife. When Verana is scared after what happens to Marie in the corridor, he puts his arm around her protectively and holds her close. Ed also knows Verana’s interests very well. He is aware that she is part of a group researching extra-sensory perception, and she most likely would have loved the opportunity to experience what Marie had.",
"Ed and Verana are married. They go side by side through the sphere, hesitating for a second before entry but making this decision together. When they are left alone in the corridor, Ed sees her fear and holds her close. Ed is also scared but he takes charge of the situation to lead his wife, and when other doors open the couple enters together. They follow each other through the rooms and each one does the same actions as another. Ed remembers about Verana's interest in extra-sensory perception and even wonders sarcastically if she is disappointed about not being contacted. The two are relatively calm and secure, they understand that nothing can be done and agree to it. Verana thinks logically and with inner serenity, Ed appreciates it and feels calm and resigned. They are similar and therefore make up a stable couple. Verana is scared for her husband when Kane is choking it as a normal wife would be, but overall the couple is as calm as possible. Moreover, both are rather interested in the aliens and support each other all the way, their couple is harmonious, especially on the contrast."
] |
49901
|
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
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What happens to Marie throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Snare by Richard Rein Smith.
Relevant chunks:
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
Question:
What happens to Marie throughout the story?
Answer:
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[
"Marie is the wife of Kane, the sharp, brash anti-hero of the story. She begins on the walk with the rest of the crew, ending up on the alien spaceship. When Kane is thrown into a separate room from the rest of the crew, Marie throws herself against the door and tries with all her strength to get it to open, until she herself is put in a separate room. The room is dark, and she is touched by a telepathic voice that tells her not to worry. They won't hurt her, and they only want to learn something about her. The voice seems to search through her memories, looking at her high school days. It also looked at human customs and their lives in general. The room must be filled with some sort of happiness gas, because she comes out of it to join the rest of the crew in an airy, relaxed mood that soon wears off. She then searches the ship for a way to break out with the rest of the group but finds nothing. She goes to sleep with Verana. She wakes up to Kane having tied them all up. When Kane is strangling Ed, she screams at him to stop. Eventually though, the computer lets them go home. ",
"Marie is the wife of Harry Kane. She joins Harry, Ed, Miller, and Verana on a walk on the Moon at the beginning of the story. When they encounter the object, she is the second one to enter through its opening, following her husband despite being frightened. Marie and the rest of the group examine the object, walking down its large corridor, when she is suddenly pushed into a room by a mysterious force. Marie is then separated by the group, returning to them later and dizzily explaining how her mind was searched and prodded for memories. Once Marie falls out of her trance and Harry returns, she returns to being frightened and panicking. She rests that night with Verana, and awakes the next morning tied to a chair, where Kane is executing his plan.",
"\nMarie is the wife of Harry Kane. She initially follows her husband into the spaceship. Then, after he is pushed into one of the rooms, she floats across the corridor into another room. Marie screams and struggles, but she is taken away regardless. Later, she comes back into the observatory and says a voice spoke to her telepathically when she was in the dark room. She then says that the voice was interested in her memories, especially the high school ones about English and history. However, she could also feel it searching for memories of general life and customs. The voice spoke very nicely to her too, which made her happy and calm. Later, she is frightened again once the machine reveals what is going to happen to them. She cares for Kane after he has his violent outburst but becomes involved in his later plan again. \n\n",
"Marie approaches the sphere together with the whole group and follows Kane, her husband, inside. There she is as scared as everyone, passes the corridor, and when a door closes behind her husband she starts beating it violently. Then she floats into another door which shuts behind screaming Marie. In a while she appears in the observatory with a calm face. She tells about a telepathic voice in the dark which calmed her down and searched through her memories. While she listens to her husband's story about the experiment and their future as prisoners on an alien planet, the calm effect disappears and she is filled with terror of dissection, for example. Then she searches the ship together with the rest of the group without effect and goes to sleep. She was frightened all the way. Soon she is joined by her husband in bed. In the morning she finds herself bound to a chair together with Ed and Verana in the kitchen. She is upset and feels shame for her husband, she is also scared of him choking Ed. She asks her husband to let go of Ed. Eventually, she returns to the Moon together with the group. "
] |
49901
|
The Snare
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy January 1956. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's easy to find a solution when there is one—the trick is to do it if there is none!
I glanced at the path we had made across the Mare Serenitatis . The Latin translated as "the Sea of Serenity." It was well named because, as far as the eye could see in every direction, there was a smooth layer of pumice that resembled the surface of a calm sea. Scattered across the quiet sea of virgin Moon dust were occasional islands of rock that jutted abruptly toward the infinity of stars above. Considering everything, our surroundings conveyed a sense of serenity like none I had ever felt.
Our bounding path across the level expanse was clearly marked. Because of the light gravity, we had leaped high into the air with each step and every time we struck the ground, the impact had raised a cloud of dustlike pumice. Now the clouds of dust were slowly settling in the light gravity.
Above us, the stars were cold, motionless and crystal-clear. Indifferently, they sprayed a faint light on our surroundings ... a dim glow that was hardly sufficient for normal vision and was too weak to be reflected toward Earth.
We turned our head-lamps on the strange object before us. Five beams of light illuminated the smooth shape that protruded from the Moon's surface.
The incongruity was so awesome that for several minutes, we remained motionless and quiet. Miller broke the silence with his quavering voice, "Strange someone didn't notice it before."
Strange? The object rose a quarter of a mile above us, a huge, curving hulk of smooth metal. It was featureless and yet conveyed a sense of alienness . It was alien and yet it wasn't a natural formation. Something had made the thing, whatever it was. But was it strange that it hadn't been noticed before? Men had lived on the Moon for over a year, but the Moon was vast and the Mare Serenitatis covered three hundred and forty thousand square miles.
"What is it?" Marie asked breathlessly.
Her husband grunted his bafflement. "Who knows? But see how it curves? If it's a perfect sphere, it must be at least two miles in diameter!"
"If it's a perfect sphere," Miller suggested, "most of it must be beneath the Moon's surface."
"Maybe it isn't a sphere," my wife said. "Maybe this is all of it."
"Let's call Lunar City and tell the authorities about it." I reached for the radio controls on my suit.
Kane grabbed my arm. "No. Let's find out whatever we can by ourselves. If we tell the authorities, they'll order us to leave it alone. If we discover something really important, we'll be famous!"
I lowered my arm. His outburst seemed faintly childish to me. And yet it carried a good measure of common sense. If we discovered proof of an alien race, we would indeed be famous. The more we discovered for ourselves, the more famous we'd be. Fame was practically a synonym for prestige and wealth.
"All right," I conceded.
Miller stepped forward, moving slowly in the bulk of his spacesuit. Deliberately, he removed a small torch from his side and pressed the brilliant flame against the metal.
A few minutes later, the elderly mineralogist gave his opinion: "It's steel ... made thousands of years ago."
Someone gasped over the intercom, "Thousands of years! But wouldn't it be in worse shape than this if it was that old?"
Miller pointed at the small cut his torch had made in the metal. The notch was only a quarter of an inch deep. "I say steel because it's similar to steel. Actually, it's a much stronger alloy. Besides that, on the Moon, there's been no water or atmosphere to rust it. Not even a wind to disturb its surface. It's at least several thousand years old."
We slowly circled the alien structure. Several minutes later, Kane shouted, "Look!"
A few feet above the ground, the structure's smooth surface was broken by a circular opening that yawned invitingly. Kane ran ahead and flashed his head-lamp into the dark recess.
"There's a small room inside," he told us, and climbed through the opening.
We waited outside and focused our lamps through the five-foot opening to give him as much light as possible.
"Come on in, Marie," he called to his wife. "This is really something! It must be an alien race. There's all kinds of weird drawings on the walls and gadgets that look like controls for something...."
Briefly, my lamp flickered over Marie's pale face. Her features struggled with two conflicting emotions: She was frightened by the alienness of the thing and yet she wanted to be with her husband. She hesitated momentarily, then climbed through the passage.
"You want to go in?" my wife asked.
"Do you?"
"Let's."
I helped Verana through the opening, climbed through myself and turned to help Miller.
Miller was sixty years old. He was an excellent mineralogist, alert mentally, but with a body that was almost feeble. I reached out to help him as he stepped into the passageway.
For a brief second, he was framed in the opening, a dark silhouette against the star-studded sky.
The next second, he was thrown twenty yards into the air. He gasped with pain when he struck the ground. " Something pushed me!"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes."
He had fallen on a spot beyond our angle of vision. I started through the passage....
... and struck an invisible solid wall.
My eyes were on the circular opening. A metal panel emerged from a recess on one side and slid across the passage. The room darkened with the absence of starlight.
" What happened? "
"The door to this damned place closed," I explained.
" What? "
Before we could recover from the shock, the room filled with a brilliant glare. We turned off our lamps.
The room was approximately twelve feet long and nine feet wide. The ceiling was only a few inches above our heads and when I looked at the smooth, hard metal, I felt as if I were trapped in some alien vault.
The walls of the room were covered with strange drawings and instruments. Here and there, kaleidoscopic lights pulsed rhythmically.
Kane brushed past me and beat his gloved fists against the metal door that had imprisoned us.
"Miller!"
"Yes?"
"See if you can get this thing open from the outside."
I knelt before the door and explored its surface with my fingers. There were no visible recesses or controls.
Over the intercom network, everyone's breath mingled and formed a rough, harsh sound. I could discern the women's quick, frightened breaths that were almost sobs. Kane's breath was deep and strong; Miller's was faltering and weak.
"Miller, get help!"
"I'll—" The sound of his breathing ceased. We listened intently.
"What happened to him?"
"I'll phone Lunar City." My fingers fumbled at the radio controls and trembled beneath the thick gloves.
I turned the dials that would connect my radio with Lunar City....
Static grated against my ear drums.
Static!
I listened to the harsh, erratic sound and my voice was weak by comparison: "Calling Lunar City."
"Static!" Kane echoed my thoughts. His frown made deep clefts between his eyebrows. "There's no static between inter-lunar radio!"
Verana's voice was small and frightened. "That sounds like the static we hear over the bigger radios when we broadcast to Earth."
"It does," Marie agreed.
"But we wouldn't have that kind of static over our radio, unless—" Verana's eyes widened until the pupils were surrounded by circles of white—"unless we were in outer space!"
We stared at the metal door that had imprisoned us, afraid even to speak of our fantastic suspicion.
I deactivated my radio.
Marie screamed as an inner door opened to disclose a long, narrow corridor beyond.
Simultaneous with the opening of the second door, I felt air press against my spacesuit. Before, our suits had been puffed outward by the pressure of air inside. Now our spacesuits were slack and dangling on our bodies.
We looked at each other and then at the inviting corridor beyond the open door.
We went single file, first Kane, then his wife Marie. Verana followed next and I was the last.
We walked slowly, examining the strange construction. The walls were featureless but still seemed alien. At various places on the walls were the outlines of doors without handles or locks.
Kane pressed his shoulder against a door and shoved. The door was unyielding.
I manipulated the air-vent controls of my spacesuit, allowed a small amount of the corridor's air into my helmet and inhaled cautiously. It smelled all right. I waited and nothing happened. Gradually, I increased the intake, turned off the oxygenating machines and removed my helmet.
"Shut off your oxy," I suggested. "We might as well breathe the air in this place and save our supply. We may need the oxygen in our suits later."
They saw that I had removed my helmet and was still alive and one by one removed their own helmets.
At the end of the corridor, Kane stopped before a blank wall. The sweat on his face glistened dully; his chest rose and fell rapidly. Kane was a pilot and one of the prerequisites for the job of guiding tons of metal between Earth and the Moon was a good set of nerves. Kane excited easily, his temper was fiery, but his nerves were like steel.
"The end of the line," he grunted.
As though to disprove the statement, a door on his right side opened soundlessly.
He went through the doorway as if shoved violently by an invisible hand.
The door closed behind him.
Marie threw herself at the door and beat at the metal. "Harry!"
Verana rushed to her side. Another door on the opposite side of the corridor opened silently. The door was behind them; they didn't notice.
Before I could warn them, Marie floated across the corridor, through the doorway.
Verana and I stared at the darkness beyond the opening, our muscles frozen by shock.
The door closed behind Marie's screaming, struggling form.
Verana's face was white with fear. Apprehensively, she glanced at the other doors that lined the hall.
I put my arms around her, held her close.
"Antigravity machines, force rays," I suggested worriedly.
For several minutes, we remained motionless and silent. I recalled the preceding events of the day, searched for a sense of normality in them. The Kanes, Miller, Verana and I lived in Lunar City with hundreds of other people. Mankind had inhabited the Moon for over a year. Means of recreation were scarce. Many people explored the place to amuse themselves. After supper, we had decided to take a walk. As simple as that: a walk on the Moon.
We had expected only the familiar craters, chasms and weird rock formations. A twist of fate and here we were: imprisoned in an alien ship.
My legs quivered with fatigue, my heart throbbed heavily, Verana's perfume dizzied me. No, it wasn't a dream. Despite our incredible situation, there was no sensation of unreality.
I took Verana's hand and led her down the long corridor, retracing our steps.
We had walked not more than two yards when the rest of the doors opened soundlessly.
Verana's hand flew to her mouth to stifle a gasp.
Six doors were now open. The only two that remained closed were the ones that the Kanes had unwillingly entered.
This time, no invisible hand thrust us into any of the rooms.
I entered the nearest one. Verana followed hesitantly.
The walls of the large room were lined with shelves containing thousands of variously colored boxes and bottles. A table and four chairs were located in the center of the green, plasticlike floor. Each chair had no back, only a curving platform with a single supporting column.
"Ed!" I joined Verana on the other side of the room. She pointed a trembling finger at some crude drawings. "The things in this room are food!"
The drawings were so simple that anyone could have understood them. The first drawing portrayed a naked man and woman removing boxes and bottles from the shelves. The second picture showed the couple opening the containers. The third showed the man eating from one of the boxes and the woman drinking from a bottle.
"Let's see how it tastes," I said.
I selected an orange-colored box. The lid dissolved at the touch of my fingers.
The only contents were small cubes of a soft orange substance.
I tasted a small piece.
"Chocolate! Just like chocolate!"
Verana chose a nearby bottle and drank some of the bluish liquid.
"Milk!" she exclaimed.
"Perhaps we'd better look at the other rooms," I told her.
The next room we examined was obviously for recreation. Containers were filled with dozens of strange games and books of instructions in the form of simple drawings. The games were foreign, but designed in such a fashion that they would be interesting to Earthmen.
Two of the rooms were sleeping quarters. The floors were covered with a spongy substance and the lights were dim and soothing.
Another room contained a small bathing pool, running water, waste-disposal units and yellow cakes of soap.
The last room was an observatory. The ceiling and an entire wall were transparent. Outside, the stars shone clearly for a few seconds, then disappeared for an equal time, only to reappear in a different position.
"Hyper-space drive," Verana whispered softly. She was fascinated by the movement of the stars. For years, our scientists had sought a hyperspatial drive to conquer the stars.
We selected a comfortable chair facing the transparent wall, lit cigarettes and waited.
A few minutes later, Marie entered the room.
I noticed with some surprise that her face was calm. If she was excited, her actions didn't betray it.
She sat next to Verana.
"What happened?" my wife asked.
Marie crossed her legs and began in a rambling manner as if discussing a new recipe, "That was really a surprise, wasn't it? I was scared silly, at first. That room was dark and I didn't know what to expect. Something touched my head and I heard a telepathic voice—"
"Telepathic?" Verana interrupted.
"Yes. Well, this voice said not to worry and that it wasn't going to hurt me. It said it only wanted to learn something about us. It was the oddest feeling! All the time, this voice kept talking to me in a nice way and made me feel at ease ... and at the same time, I felt something search my mind and gather information. I could actually feel it search my memories!"
"What memories?" I inquired.
She frowned with concentration. "Memories of high school mostly. It seemed interested in English and history classes. And then it searched for memories of our customs and lives in general...."
Kane stalked into the room at that moment, his face red with anger.
" Do you know where we are? " he demanded. "When those damned aliens got me in that room, they explained what this is all about. We're guinea pigs!"
"Did they use telepathy to explain?" Verana asked. I suddenly remembered that she was a member of a club that investigated extra-sensory perception with the hope of learning how it operated. She was probably sorry she hadn't been contacted telepathically.
"Yeah," Kane replied. "I saw all sorts of mental pictures and they explained what they did to us. Those damned aliens want us for their zoo!"
"Start at the beginning," I suggested.
He flashed an angry glance at me, but seemed to calm somewhat. "This ship was made by a race from another galaxy. Thousands of years ago, they came to Earth in their spaceships when men were primitives living in caves. They wanted to know what our civilization would be like when we developed space flight. So they put this ship on the Moon as a sort of booby-trap. They put it there with the idea that when we made spaceships and went to the Moon, sooner or later, we'd find the ship and enter it— like rabbits in a snare! "
"And now the booby-trap is on its way home," I guessed.
"Yeah, this ship is taking us to their planet and they're going to keep us there while they study us."
"How long will the trip take?" I asked.
"Six months. We'll be bottled up in this crate for six whole damned months! And when we get there, we'll be prisoners!"
Marie's hypnotic spell was fading and once more her face showed the terror inside her.
"Don't feel so bad," I told Kane. "It could be worse. It should be interesting to see an alien race. We'll have our wives with us—"
"Maybe they'll dissect us!" Marie gasped.
Verana scoffed. "A race intelligent enough to build a ship like this? A race that was traveling between the stars when we were living in caves? Dissection is primitive. They won't have to dissect us in order to study us. They'll have more advanced methods."
"Maybe we can reach the ship's controls somehow," Kane said excitedly.
"We've got to try to change the ship's course and get back to the Moon!"
"It's impossible. Don't waste your time." The voice had no visible source and seemed to fill the room.
Verana snapped her fingers. "So that's why the aliens read Marie's mind! They wanted to learn our language so they could talk to us!"
Kane whirled in a complete circle, glaring at each of the four walls.
"Where are you? Who are you?"
"I'm located in a part of the ship you can't reach. I'm a machine."
"Is anyone else aboard besides ourselves?"
"No. I control the ship." Although the voice spoke without stilted phrases, the tone was cold and mechanical.
"What are your—your masters going to do with us?" Marie asked anxiously.
"You won't be harmed. My masters merely wish to question and examine you. Thousands of years ago, they wondered what your race would be like when it developed to the space-flight stage. They left this ship on your Moon only because they were curious. My masters have no animosity toward your race, only compassion and curiosity."
I remembered the way antigravity rays had shoved Miller from the ship and asked the machine, "Why didn't you let our fifth member board the ship?"
"The trip to my makers' planet will take six months. There are food, oxygen and living facilities for four only of your race. I had to prevent the fifth from entering the ship."
"Come on," Kane ordered. "We'll search this ship room by room and we'll find some way to make it take us back to Earth."
"It's useless," the ship warned us.
For five hours, we minutely examined every room. We had no tools to force our way through solid metal walls to the engine or control rooms. The only things in the ship that could be lifted and carried about were the containers of food and alien games. None were sufficiently heavy or hard enough to put even a scratch in the heavy metal.
Six rooms were open to our use. The two rooms in which the Kanes had been imprisoned were locked and there were no controls or locks to work on.
The rooms that we could enter were without doors, except the ones that opened into the corridor.
After intensive searching, we realized there was no way to damage the ship or reach any section other than our allotted space.
We gave up.
The women went to the sleeping compartments to rest and Kane I went to the "kitchen."
At random, we sampled the variously colored boxes and bottles and discussed our predicament.
"Trapped," Kane said angrily. "Trapped in a steel prison." He slammed his fist against the table top. "But there must be a way to get out! Every problem has a solution!"
"You sure?" I asked.
"What?"
" Does every problem have a solution? I don't believe it. Some problems are too great. Take the problem of a murderer in our civilization: John Doe has killed someone and his problem is to escape. Primarily, a murderer's problem is the same principle as ours. A murderer has to outwit an entire civilization. We have to outwit an entire civilization that was hundreds of times more advanced than ours is now when we were clubbing animals and eating the meat raw. Damned few criminals get away these days, even though they've got such crowds to lose themselves in. All we have is a ship that we can't control. I don't think we have a chance."
My resignation annoyed him. Each of us had reacted differently: Kane's wife was frightened, Verana was calm because of an inner serenity that few people have, I was resigned and Kane was angry.
For several minutes, we sampled the different foods. Every one had a distinctive flavor, comparable to that of a fruit or vegetable on Earth.
Kane lifted a brown bottle to his lips, took a huge gulp and almost choked.
"Whiskey!"
"My masters realized your race would develop intoxicants and tried to create a comparable one," the machine explained.
I selected a brown bottle and sampled the liquid. "A little stronger than our own," I informed the machine.
We drank until Kane was staggering about the room, shouting insults at the alien race and the mechanical voice that seemed to be everywhere. He beat his fist against a wall until blood trickled from bruised knuckles.
"Please don't hurt yourself," the machine pleaded.
" Why? " Kane screamed at the ceiling. "Why should you care?"
"My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition."
Kane banged his head against a bulkhead; an ugly bruise formed rapidly.
"Shtop me, then!"
"I can't. My masters created no way for me to restrain or contact you other than use of your language."
It took fully fifteen minutes to drag Kane to his sleeping compartment.
After I left Kane in his wife's care, I went to the adjoining room and stretched out on the soft floor beside Verana.
I tried to think of some solution. We were locked in an alien ship at the start of a six months' journey to a strange planet. We had no tools or weapons.
Solution? I doubted if two dozen geniuses working steadily for years could think of one!
I wondered what the alien race was like. Intelligent, surely: They had foreseen our conquest of space flight when we hadn't even invented the wheel. That thought awed me—somehow they had analyzed our brains thousands of years ago and calculated what our future accomplishments would be.
They had been able to predict our scientific development, but they hadn't been able to tell how our civilization would develop. They were curious, so they had left an enormously elaborate piece of bait on the Moon.
The aliens were incredibly more advanced than ourselves. I couldn't help thinking, And to a rabbit in a snare, mankind must seem impossibly clever .
I decided to ask the machine about its makers in the "morning."
When I awoke, my head was throbbing painfully.
I opened my eyes and blinked several times to make sure they were functioning properly. I wasn't in the compartment where I had fallen asleep a few hours before.
I was tied to one of the chairs in the "kitchen." Beside me, Verana was bound to a chair by strips of cloth from her skirt, and across from us, Marie was secured to another chair.
Kane staggered into the room. Although he was visibly drunk, he appeared more sober than the night before. His dark hair was rumpled and his face was flushed, but his eyes gleamed with a growing alertness.
"Awake, huh?"
"What have you done, Harry?" his wife screamed at him. Her eyes were red with tears and her lips twisted in an expression of shame when she looked at him.
"Obvious, isn't it? While all of you were asleep, I conked each of you on the head, dragged you in here and tied you up." He smiled crookedly.
"It's amazing the things a person can do when he's pickled. I'm sorry I had to be so rough, but I have a plan and I knew you wouldn't agree or cooperate with me."
"What's your plan?" I asked.
He grinned wryly and crinkled bloodshot eyes. "I don't want to live in a zoo on an alien planet. I want to go home and prove my theory that this problem has a solution."
I grunted my disgust.
"The solution is simple," he said. "We're in a trap so strong that the aliens didn't establish any means to control our actions. When men put a lion in a strong cage, they don't worry about controlling the lion because the lion can't get out. We're in the same basic situation."
"So what?" Verana queried in a sarcastic tone.
"The aliens want us transported to their planet so they can examine and question us. Right?"
"Right."
"Ed, remember that remark the machine made last night?"
"What remark?"
"It said, ' My masters will be displeased with me if you arrive in a damaged condition.' What does that indicate to you?"
I assumed a baffled expression. I didn't have the slightest idea of what he was driving at and I told him so.
"Ed," he said, "if you could build an electronic brain capable of making decisions, how would you build it?"
"Hell, I don't know," I confessed.
"Well, if I could build an electronic brain like the one running this ship, I'd build it with a conscience so it'd do its best at all times."
"Machines always do their best," I argued. "Come on, untie us. I'm getting a crick in my back!" I didn't like the idea of being slugged while asleep. If Kane had been sober and if his wife hadn't been present, I would have let him know exactly what I thought of him.
" Our machines always do their best," he argued, "because we punch buttons and they respond in predetermined patterns. But the electronic brain in this ship isn't automatic. It makes decisions and I'll bet it even has to decide how much energy and time to put into each process!"
"So what?"
He shrugged muscular shoulders. "So this ship is operated by a thinking, conscientious machine. It's the first time I've encountered such a machine, but I think I know what will happen. I spent hours last night figuring—"
"What are you talking about?" I interrupted. "Are you so drunk that you don't know—"
"I'll show you, Ed."
He walked around the table and stood behind my chair. I felt his thick fingers around my throat and smelled the alcohol on his breath.
"Can you see me, machine?" he asked the empty air.
"Yes," the electronic brain replied.
"Watch!"
Kane tightened his fingers around my throat.
Verana and Marie screamed shrilly.
My head seemed to swell like a balloon; my throat gurgled painfully.
"Please stop," the machine pleaded.
"What will your masters think of you if I kill all of us? You'll return to them with a cargo of dead people!"
The machine didn't answer. I waited for the electronic brain to interfere and, with a cold knot in my stomach, realized the machine had said it had no way to control our actions!
"Your purpose won't be fulfilled, will it?" Kane demanded. "Not if you return with dead specimens!"
"No," the machine admitted.
"If you don't take us back to the Moon," Kane threatened, "I'll kill all of us !"
The alien electronic brain was silent.
By this time, I couldn't see and Kane's voice was a hollow, faraway thing that rang in my ears. I tugged at my bindings, but they only tightened as I struggled.
"If you take us back to the Moon, your masters will never know you failed in your mission. They won't know you failed because you won't bring them proof of your failure."
My fading consciousness tried to envision the alien mechanical brain as it struggled with the problem.
"Look at it this way," Kane persisted. "If you carry our corpses to your masters, all your efforts will have been useless. If you return us to the Moon alive, you'll still have a chance to carry out your mission later."
A long silence followed. Verana and Marie screamed at Kane to let go. A soft darkness seemed to fill the room, blurring everything, drowning even their shrieks in strangling blackness.
"You win," the machine conceded. "I'll return the ship to the Moon."
Kane released his grip on my throat.
"See?" he asked. "Didn't I tell you every problem has a solution?"
I didn't answer. I was too busy enjoying breathing again.
|
What do Shano’s occupation and actions thoughts the story reveal about his traits?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Signal Red by Henry Guth.
Relevant chunks:
SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
Question:
What do Shano’s occupation and actions thoughts the story reveal about his traits?
Answer:
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[
"Shano’s occupation is being a miner and laborer. His time mining on Pluto leaves his lungs permanently damaged, and he has a constant cough that never seems to go away. However, he has been to many other planets as well, including Mars and Uranus. Although Shano is only a lowly miner, his actions also reveal how courageous and righteous he is as a person. His decision to take the liner, despite the red signal, shows that he is willing to take risks to reach his goal. Later, when he remembers why Rourke cannot be trusted, he does not hesitate to take matters into his own hands to deal with the traitor. Shano’s bravery is also shown when he braves the toxic gas to save the liner. He knows that he can last for up to 12 hours at most and that he will most likely die on the trip home. However, this does not deter him if he can get the ship safely to Venus. While Shano’s occupation in the story is not regarded highly, his actions show that he should not be underestimated. ",
"Shano is tired of his life and wants to rest. He goes back home with the thought of dying there. For this reason he puts himself in danger by taking this flight with a red signal - he doesn't have what to live for, only for coming home to die. He is also brave and noble as he saves the whole crew by going to the engine room. He is full of initiative, he can't sit still in the cabin. His mind is not used to thinking, he is a worker but he understands he is the only one who can last in the toxic gas and he understands who the traitor is. His desire to get home alive or dead moves him forward and makes him brave as it is the only sense in his life. He is happy to be of use at least as he feels old and feeble from time to time as he has worked with gas and his lungs are damaged.\n",
"Shano is very weak, when he coughs his whole body jerk. He also has arthritic joints pain along his limbs. He was digging, lifting, lugging and pounding around the planet for his whole life. He states that he is a laborer. He has worked in the Plutonian mines, where other men died from the toxia gas, he simply got sick because of the gum-clogged lungs. \n\nHe acts impulsively. He has heard rumors about nicked jaws, which lead him to murder Rourke. He does not really feel happy or sad when thinking of going home, but he is determined to go home to die. However, he changes his mind when he heard about the toxia gas in the engine room. When the red signal appears, he still decides to aboard the ship. He knows that he is not used to thinking, but doing works by his hands. Shano knows that he is helping the ship by entering the Engine Room, thus he feels happy. He calls himself useless, but being able to accomplish something as important as killing a spy and driving the ship, he feels good. This is more important than dying at home. ",
"Shano is an ex-labourer, working on different planets as he went. He has spent his life \"digging, lifting, lugging and pounding\". He is tired and hates the idea of spending another minute on Mercury. He is frustrated with his position in life, having a bit of a chip on his shoulder, immediately noticing the change in treatment the captain shows him once he realises his occupation. A lifetime of working on his feet has left his body aching, and all he wants to do is get home to die. It seems he has given up in life. He believes that he hasn't lived a life of any note, and he just wants to end it now. He reveals his insecurity through his thoughts, presuming about how the captain and crew see him based on his status. He is wise and has a great memory, being able to rehash a conversation he had with a coworker about a man with a notched jaw. He is clearly resentful of the way he has been treated in life, calling himself an \"ignorant\" man. He is clearly very curious, going outside his bunk when the ship goes dark. He breaks rules and doesn't take orders. He also clearly has a very strong sense of right and wrong, killing Rourke when he realises who he is. He decides he finally wants to be a hero in life, and goes and mends the ship. He displays not only his sense of duty in this but his longing for recognition. "
] |
63860
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SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
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What equipment is employed throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Signal Red by Henry Guth.
Relevant chunks:
SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
Question:
What equipment is employed throughout the story?
Answer:
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[
"One of the main pieces of equipment used on the Stardust liner is a loudspeaker. The primary role of the speaker is to give out instructions to the crew on the ship and makes any important announcements. The men also use phosphorescent bulbs as a light source to navigate their surroundings when the liner goes into total shutdown. Crew members also carry around a blaster for protection, most likely if there is ever a need for self-defense. There is also usage of a ray gun to fight back against the Uranian fleets. To ensure survival, emergency oxygen pipes are used to maintain atmosphere. Shano also carries a pack of cigarettes that do not seem important but later become essential to the story.",
"The ship is locked with multiple air locks. There is a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot is in earphones. A loud-speaker gives orders. Machinery is stopped and lights are out when ship is hiding from the enemy. For such cases there are emergency oxygen cylinders. Some men have blasters. There were port guns and ray guns and the battle was almost silent. Pipes are all around. There is a screen and a selector in the engine room which keep the ship going. Toxia gas is needed to make the selector work but people can't handle it. There is massive machinery and a shattered gold-gleaming cylinder in the engine room which make the whole ship move. Heavy rods are there which need to be lifted.",
"Firstly, Shano is wearing polarized goggles, but it is unclear what it is used for. Secondly, there is a gray box next to the pipes at the corner of the passageway, which is used to attract the Uranians detection since its dial needle keeps quivering when everything else went silence. It’s assumed by Shano that this device was planted by the spy of the Uranians. When Shano fights with Rourke, he first uses his cigarette to dug into Rourke’s face and uses his hand to grasp Rouke’s neck, which makes his face turn purple and choked to death. When Shano is fixing the rod, he simply uses his bare hand whenever the rods fall. ",
"There is various equipment employed throughout the story. Phosphorescent bulbs are used when the ship goes dark to light the passageways. A grey box with two switches and a radium dial is used. It is an electric signal box to give away the ship's position. An intercom is employed so the captain can speak to the crew. There are port guns used in battle. Atom motors are employed to keep the ship running. Shano uses the selector valve rods to keep the ship running. \n"
] |
63860
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SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Signal Red by Henry Guth.
Relevant chunks:
SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Shano is a sickly old man in line to board the space liner Stardust to go home. There is a red signal announcement for the liner, and guests are given an option to receive a refund. Many guests leave after hearing the danger signal, but Shano sticks his ticket into the scanner and moves to get on the liner. Shano chooses to step in anyways despite the dangers, and the Stardust takes off into space again. Captain Menthlo informs him of the Uranian enemy fleets and the high possibility of running into danger with one of them. When the captain realizes Shano's role as a laborer, he makes him sign a waiver because of the possible danger his life will be when they shut off the ship and mechanical device to avoid the enemies. Once he exits to the next deck, he sees the same lieutenant from earlier speak to him again. The lieutenant's name is Rourke, and he asks why Shano is so anxious to board the ship. Later, as Shano smokes in his cabin, he tries to remember the specific saying for people with nicked jaws. Later, the ship announces that it will now maintain dead silence mode to avoid the Uranian fleets. Shano leaves his room to follow one of the young ensign, who walks by with a blaster. He then realizes that he cannot go back to his room. However, he sees an indistinguishable figure enter the engine room and notices a grey box with switches. Not soon after, the ship enters an offensive attack mode because the Uranian fleets have noticed them. Shano suddenly remembers the rumors to watch out for a man with a nicked jaw because he sells out information to Uranus. He knows that nobody will believe him about a traitor on the ship, so he faces Rourke himself. Shano digs his cigarette into the other man's body and clings to his body. He then twists Rourke's neck with his hands and kills the traitor. The frantic yelling of the other members catches his attention again, and the Stardust informs everybody on board that the ship is midway to Venus. However, there is toxic gas in the engine room now, and nobody on board can withstand the fumes to fix the engines. Although Shano continues to smoke, he does go into the engine room through the emergency exit to fix the space liner. The other crew on the ship are confused by how the liner continues to fly towards Venus. They realize that Shano is working the valve rods in the engine room. Shano thinks about how the Uranian fleet will come into the area and expect to find the Starliner but only find nothing. The fact that this escape is because of him makes him laugh and cough more. ",
"Shano awaits with confusing feelings for a spaceship to land in the spaceport and to take him home. Red signal is announced - the travel is dangerous and at one's own risk. The line dissolves and people rush for refunds, Shano decides to travel home anyway. On board the captain explains that a Uranian fleet is on their way and guesses Shano is from Pluto. Soon, there is an order to keep silent on the ship. Alarmed Shano exits the cabin and sneaks around the ship, then there is a short silence followed by emergency. Short orders and a state of anxiety last and then a sudden relief comes - the fight is over. Shano sees Rourke exiting the emergency room and remembers a nick on the jaw to be a sight of trade with Uranus. He starts a fight and chokes the traitor. The selector is gone, there is gas in the engine room and no one can enter to fix the selector. Shano decides to go in as his lungs are damaged by gas already and he will be able to last longer. He works in the engine room and gets the ship going, hoping to reach Earth and die then proving himself useful. ",
"The main character, Shano, is currently on Q City Spaceport, waiting to board his spaceship that would take him home to die. Shano has gum-clogged lungs, and it was quite an advantage to him when working inside the mines. However, before he could board the ship, an announcement is made about the signal turning red, signifying that there is danger out there, and passengers could travel at their own risk. Shano, desired to go home, decides to take this risk. \n\nHe is the only passenger aboard along with the crew members. The captain of the ship, Menthlo, told him that there is a Uranian fleet on their way. He warns Shano that they will turn the ship off later to avoid detection, and tells him to stay in his cabin. After he sees the kicked jaw of Rourke, the lieutenant of the ship, he heads towards his cabin, where he lays and thinks about the rumors he has heard about nicked jaws. Then captain’s voice comes through the speaker, telling everyone to shut down all machineries and maintain dead silence because the Uranians are listening for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Feeling anxious in his cabin, Shano follows a young man down to the Engine Room. Pausing after seeing a specious figure going into the room, he sees a gray box. Even though everything becomes silent, they are detected by the Uranians. The battle begins. He once again notices the gray box and that the needle inside did not stop, thus he assumes that someone planted it there to make sure the Uranians discover them – a man sold them out. He immediately assumes that it is the nicked jaw man, he is up to something. Then, after spotting the nicked jaw man suspiciously leaving the emergency door, Rourke, Shano digs the cigarette into his face, and grasps his neck until he stops breathing and drops dead. Then he learns from the captain that a selector has been smashed, and in order to fix it, one has to enter the Engine Room which is filled with toxia gas. He knows that his gum-clogged lungs is able to slow down he consumption of the toxia gas in comparison to other people who breaths the gas. Thus, he enters the Engine Room, and starts to work on the selector. Leaving the captain and the crew in shock, they are finally on their way again. ",
"Shano is a retired labourer on Mercury, getting ready to make the journey Home to Earth. As he gets to the spaceport, all the passengers of the spaceship \"Stardust\" are informed that there is a \"red signal\" and passengers are not advised to fly. Shano is old and tired, and just wants to get home so he can die, so he decides to board regardless. He boards the ship with a lieutenant with the notch on his jaw named Rourke, onboard he meets the captain, who advises him to stay in his cabin. The captain informs him that there is a hostile Uranian fleet waiting for them on their path, and they will have to turn all power off during the journey. Shano is intrigued by Rourke and the notch on his jaw, thinking it reminded him of something he had heard once. Shano's lungs are very weak from working on the pluto for so long. Shano goes to his cabin, and the ship goes dark. He opens his doors and walks down the corridor. He sees a figure disappear into the engine room. Suddenly, the captain's voice rings through the intercom. The ship has been spotted by the Uranians, a battle ensues. The crew of the Stardust win this round. Shano notices an electric signal box, which tells of the ships position. He realises something. He remembers what he had heard about the man with the notch on his jaw sold the crew out to Uranus. It was Rourke. Rourke arrives, and Shano attacks him, swiftly killing him. The captain's voice flashes once again that there is an emergency in the engine room. The ship has been hit and everything is dead. Someone has broken through the engine room and it has filled with toxic gas. More Uranian ships are coming, and there's no way to repair the tear in the engine room without being poisoned by the gas. They are stranded. Shano knows that unlike the other men onboard, he can withstand the effects of the gas for a dozen hours, whereas the rest would be dead in a minute. He decides to repair the ship and goes to work in the engine room. He may not die on Earth, but he will save everyone else on board, who will now make it to Venus because of him. "
] |
63860
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SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
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Who is Rourke, and what are his traits in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Signal Red by Henry Guth.
Relevant chunks:
SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
Question:
Who is Rourke, and what are his traits in the story?
Answer:
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[
"Rourke is the lieutenant with the nicked jaw who Shano first meets at the air lock. He initially refuses the ticket and reminds Shano that there is a Red signal placed on the Stardust. He tells Shano that the latter is heading towards his funeral but still ends up punching his ticket. Rourke is indirectly mentioned when Shano asks the captain about nicked jaws, a question to which the captain responds that it happens when somebody has cut himself shaving. Rourke is later revealed to be a traitor loyal to the Uranians and attempts to sabotage the ship so that the Uranian fleet can force the Stardust to surrender. He is a manipulative individual, capable of convincing most crew members that he is innocent and means no harm. He also pretends to act surprised that Shano is on board, knowing that he will betray them to the Uranians. Rourke is also a very sneaky person. When the ship turns off all mechanics to avoid detection, he uses the opportunity to sneak into the engine room and mess up the ship’s controls. He can remain mostly undetected, only seen by Shano as he hurries into the room. ",
"Rourke is a lieutenant on the ship who has a nick on his jaw. This is believed to be a feature of those who sell out to Uranus. Rourke is a traitor, he planted an electronic signal box to give away the ship's position and provoke the Uranian attack.He didn't want Shano to get on board and warned him. Rourke is a chunky man with a blaster. He is young, strong and angry at Shano for getting involved. Rourke dies as a consequence of a fight with Shano who considers him a traitor. ",
"Rourke is the lieutenant of the ship, who is a nick-jawed Earthman. Rourke first refuses the ticket, stating that it is signal red. After having faint memories within his mind, he takes Shano’s ticket mentioning that it is his funeral. He is staring out to the viewport when Shano spots him later, Shano thinks that he is just idling. Later, he is suspiciously using the Engine Room emergency exit when Shano spots him again. He is chunky and holsters a flat blaster. He has weaker hands than Shano. And is killed by Shano. ",
"Rourke is the lieutenant of the starship ``Stardust\" who sells out the ship to the Uranians. He is clearly a very crooked character from this one act alone, taking personal gain over the lives of his crew. He is described as \"sullen\" and \"chunky\". His one redeeming quality that could be found would be in when he tried to convince Shano not to board that ship, thus he would have saved his life. He calls Shano an old man, clearly giving off a rude and unpleasant demeanor. He is a shifty, complicated character, because while he sold the ship out to the Uranians, and is not very polite, he did look out for Shano. \n"
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63860
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SIGNAL RED
By HENRY GUTH
They tried to stop him. Earth Flight 21 was a suicide run, a coffin ship, they told him. Uranian death lay athwart the space lanes. But Shano already knew this was his last ride.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out.
"Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said.
Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad.
He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes.
The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runways stood out in sharp, diamond-clear detail. High up, beyond the cone of illumination, a detached triple row of bright specks—portholes of the liner Stardust —sank slowly down.
There was no eagerness in him. Only a tiredness. A relief. Relief from a lifetime of beating around the planets. A life of digging, lifting, lugging and pounding. Like a work-worn Martian camel, he was going home to die.
As though on oiled pistons the ship sank into the light, its long shark-like hull glowing soft and silvery, and settled with a feathery snuggle into the cradle's ribs.
The passenger line quivered as a loud-speaker boomed:
" Stardust, now arrived at Cradle Six! Stardust, Cradle Six! All passengers for Venus and Earth prepare to board in ten minutes. "
Shano coughed, and wiped phlegm from his thin lips, his hand following around the bony contours of his face, feeling the hollows and the beard stubble and loose skin of his neck. He coughed and thought of the vanium mines of Pluto, and his gum-clogged lungs. A vague, pressing desire for home overwhelmed him. It had been so long.
" Attention! Attention, Stardust passengers! The signal is red. The signal is red. Refunds now being made. Refunds now. Take-off in five minutes. "
The man ahead swore and flicked up an arm. "Red," he groaned. "By the infinite galaxies, this is the last straw!" He charged away, knocking Shano aside as he passed.
Red signal. In bewildered anxiety Shano lifted the goggles from his eyes and stared into the sudden blackness. The red signal. Danger out there. Passengers advised to ground themselves, or travel at their own risk.
He felt the passengers bump and fumble past him, grumbling vexatiously.
A hot dread assailed him, and he coughed, plucking at his chest. Plucking at an urgency there.
Dropping the goggles to his rheumy eyes, he saw that the passenger line had dissolved. He moved, shuffling, to the gate, thrust his ticket into the scanner slot, and pushed through the turnstile when it clicked.
" Flight twenty-one, now arriving from Venus ," the loud-speaker said monotonously. Shano glanced briefly upward and saw the gleaming belly of twenty-one sinking into the spaceport cone of light.
He clawed his way up the gangway and thrust out his ticket to the lieutenant standing alone at the air lock. The lieutenant, a sullen, chunky man with a queer nick in his jawbone, refused the ticket.
"Haven't you heard, mister? Red signal. Go on back."
Shano coughed, and peered through the lenses of his goggles. "Please," he said. "Want to go home. I've a right." The nicked jaw stirred faint memories within his glazed mind.
The lieutenant punched his ticket. "It's your funeral, old man."
The loud-speaker blared. " Stardust, taking off in thirty seconds. The signal is red. Stardust, taking— "
With the words dinning in his ears, Shano stepped into the air lock. The officer followed, spun wheels, and the lock closed. The outside was shut off.
Lifting goggles they entered the hull, through a series of two more locks, closing each behind them.
"We're afloat," the officer said. "We've taken off." A fleck of light danced far back in his eye. Shano felt the pressure of acceleration gradually increasing, increasing, and hurried in.
Captain Menthlo, a silver-mustached Jupiterian, broad, huge, yet crushable as a beetle, talked while his hands manipulated a panel of studs in the control room. The pilot, his back encased in leather, sat in a bucket seat before him, listening into earphones.
"Surprised to learn of a passenger aboard," the captain said, glancing briefly sideways. "You're entitled to know of the danger ahead." He flicked a final stud, spoke to the pilot and at last turned a serious, squared face to Shano. "Old man," he said. "There's a Uranian fleet out there. We don't know how many ships in this sector. Flight twenty-one, which just landed, had a skirmish with one, and got away. We may not be so lucky. You know how these Uranian devils are."
Shano coughed, and wiped his mouth. "Dirty devils," he said. "I was driv' off the planet once, before this war started. I know things about them Uranian devils. Heard them in the mines around. Hears things, a laborer does."
The captain seemed for the first time to realize the social status of his lone passenger, and he became a little gruff.
"Want you to sign this waiver, saying you're traveling at your own risk. We'll expect you to keep to your cabin as much as possible. When the trouble comes we can't bother with a passenger. In a few hours we'll shut down the ship entirely, and every mechanical device aboard, to try to avoid detection." His mustaches rose like two spears from each side of his squared nose as his face changed to an alert watchfulness. "Going home, eh?" he said. "You've knocked around some, by the looks of you. Pluto, from the sound of that cough."
Shano scrawled his signature on the waiver. "Yeah," he said. "Pluto. Where a man's lungs fights gas." He blinked watery eyes. "Captain, what's a notched jaw mean to you?"
"Well, old man," the captain grasped Shano's shoulder and turned him around. "It means somebody cut himself, shaving. You stick tight to your cabin." He nodded curtly and indicated the door.
Descending the companionway to the next deck Shano observed the nick-jawed lieutenant staring out the viewport, apparently idling. The man turned and gripped Shano's thin arm.
"A light?" he said, tapping a cigarette. Shano produced a lighter disk and the chunky man puffed. He was an Earthman and his jaw seemed cut with a knife, notched like a piece of wood. Across the breast of his tunic was a purple band, with the name Rourke . "Why are you so anxious to get aboard, old man?" He searched Shano's face. "There's trouble ahead, you know."
Shano coughed, wracking his body, as forgotten memories stirred sluggishly in his mind. "Yup," he said, and jerked free and stumbled down the steel deck.
In his cabin he lay on the bunk, lighted a cigarette and smoked, coughing and staring at the rivet-studded bulkhead. The slow movement of his mind resolved into a struggle, one idea groping for the other.
What were the things he'd heard about nicked jaws? And where had he heard them? Digging ore on Pluto; talk in the pits? Secretive suspicions voiced in smoke-laden saloons of Mars? In the labor gangs of Uranus? Where? Shano smoked and didn't know. But he knew there was a rumor, and that it was the talk of ignorant men. The captain had evaded it. Shano smoked and coughed and stared at the steel bulkhead and waited.
The ship's alarm clanged. Shano jerked from his bunk like a broken watch spring. He crouched, trembling, on arthritic joints, as a loud-speaker blared throughout the ship.
" All hands! We now maintain dead silence. Close down and stop all machinery. Power off and lights out. An enemy fleet is out there, listening and watching for mechanical and electronic disturbance. Atmosphere will be maintained from emergency oxygen cylinders. Stop pumps. "
Shano crouched and listened as the ship's steady drone ceased and the vibrations ceased. The pumps stopped, the lights went out.
Pressing the cold steel bulkhead, Shano heard oxygen hiss through the pipes. Hiss and hiss and then flow soundlessly, filling the cabin and his lungs. He choked.
The cabin was like a mine shaft, dark and cold. Feet pounded on the deck outside.
Shano clawed open the door. He peered out anxiously.
Cold blobs of light, phosphorescent bulbs held in the fists of men, glimmered by. Phosphorescent bulbs, because the power was off. Shano blinked. He saw officers and men, their faces tight and pinched, hurrying in all directions. Hurrying to shut down the ship.
He acted impulsively. A young ensign strode by, drawn blaster in hand. Shano followed him; followed the bluish glow of his bulb, through labyrinthine passages and down a companionway, coughing and leering against the pain in his joints. The blue light winked out in the distance and Shano stopped.
He was suddenly alarmed. The captain had warned him to stay in his cabin. He looked back and forth, wondering how to return.
A bell clanged.
Shano saw a cold bulb glowing down the passageway, and he shuffled hopefully toward it. The bulb moved away. He saw an indistinct figure disappear through a door marked, ENGINE ROOM.
Shano paused uncertainly at the end of the passageway. A thick cluster of vertical pipes filled the corner. He peered at the pipes and saw a gray box snuggled behind them. It had two toggle switches and a radium dial that quivered delicately.
Shano scratched his scalp as boots pounded on the decks, above and below. He listened attentively to the ship's familiar noises diminishing one by one. And finally even the pounding of feet died out; everything became still. The silence shrieked in his ears.
The ship coasted. Shano could sense it coasting. He couldn't feel it or hear it, but he knew it was sliding ghost-like through space like a submarine dead under water, slipping quietly past a listening enemy.
The ship's speaker rasped softly. " Emergency. Battle posts. "
The captain's voice. Calm, brief. It sent a tremor through Shano's body. He heard a quick scuffle of feet again, running feet, directly overhead, and the captain's voice, more urgently, "Power on. They've heard us."
The words carried no accusation, but Shano realized what they meant. A slip-up. Something left running. Vibrations picked up quickly by detectors of the Uranian space fleet.
Shano coughed and heard the ship come to life around him. He pulled himself out of the spasm, cursing Pluto. Cursing his diseased, gum-clogged lungs. Cursing the Uranian fleet that was trying to prevent his going home—even to die.
This was a strange battle. Strange indeed. It was mostly silence.
Occasionally, as though from another world, came a brief, curt order.
"Port guns alert." Then hush and tension.
The deck lurched and the ship swung this way and that. Maybe dodging, maybe maneuvering—Shano didn't know. He felt the deck lurch, that was all.
"Fire number seven."
He heard the weird scream of a ray gun, and felt the constricting terror that seemed to belt the ship like an iron band.
This was a battle in space, and out there were Uranian cruisers trying to blast the Stardust out of the sky. Trying and trying, while the captain dodged and fired back—pitted his skill and knowledge against an enemy Shano couldn't see.
He wanted desperately to help the captain break through, and get to Earth. But he could only cling to the plastic pipes and cough.
The ship jounced and slid beneath his feet, and was filled with sound. It rocked and rolled. Shano caromed off the bulkhead.
"Hold fire."
He crawled to his knees on the slippery deck, grabbed the pipes and pulled himself erect, hand over hand. His eyes came level with the gray metal box behind the pipes. He squinted, fascinated, at the quivering dial needle. "Hey!" he said.
"Stand by."
Shano puzzled it out, his mind groping. He wasn't used to thinking. Only working with his hands.
This box. This needle that had quivered when the ship was closed down....
"It's over. Chased them off. Ready guns before laying to. Third watch on duty."
Shano sighed at the sudden release of tension throughout the space liner Stardust .
Smoke spewed from his nostrils. His forehead wrinkled with concentration. Those rumors: "Man sells out to Uranus, gets a nick cut in his jaw. Ever see a man with a nick in his jaw? Watch him, he's up to something." The talk of ignorant men. Shano remembered.
He poked behind the pipes and angrily slapped the toggle switches on the box. The captain would only scoff. He'd never believe there was a traitor aboard who had planted an electronic signal box, giving away the ship's position. He'd never believe the babblings of an old man.
He straightened up, glaring angrily. He knew. And the knowledge made him cold and furious. He watched the engine room emergency exit as it opened cautiously.
A chunky man backed out, holstering a flat blaster. He turned and saw Shano, standing smoking. He walked over and nudged Shano, his face dark. Shano blew smoke into the dark face.
"Old man," said Rourke. "What're you doing down here?"
Shano blinked.
Rourke fingered the nick in his jaw, eyes glinting. "You're supposed to be in your cabin," he said. "Didn't I warn you we'd run into trouble?"
Shano smoked and contemplated the chunky man. Estimated his strength and youth and felt the anger and frustration mount in him. "Devil," he said.
"Devil," he said and dug his cigarette into the other's face.
He lunged then, clawing. He dug the cigarette into Rourke's flushed face, and clung to his body. Rourke howled. He fell backward to the deck, slapping at his blistered face. He thrashed around and Shano clung to him, battered, pressing the cigarette relentlessly, coughing, cursing the pain in his joints.
Shano grasped Rourke's neck with his hands. He twisted the neck with his gnarled hands. Strong hands that had worked.
He got up when Rourke stopped thrashing. The face was purple and he was dead. Shano shivered. He crouched in the passageway shivering and coughing.
A tremendous grinding sounded amid-ships. Loud rending noises of protesting metal. The ship bucked like a hooked fish. Then it was still. An empty clank echoed through the hull. The captain's voice came, almost yelling. "Emergency! Emergency! Back to your posts. Engine room—report! Engine room—"
Shano picked himself off the deck, his mind muddled. He coughed and put a cigarette to his lips, flicking a lighter disk jerkily from his pocket. He blew smoke from his nostrils and heard the renewed pounding of feet. What was going on now?
"Engine room! Your screen is dead! Switch onto loud-speaker system. Engine room!"
Giddily, Shano heard clicks and rasps and then a thick voice, atom motors whirring in the background.
"Selector's gone, sir. Direct hit. Heat ray through the deck plates. We've sealed the tear. Might repair selector in five hours."
Shano coughed and sent a burst of smoke from his mouth.
"Captain!" A rasping, grating sound ensued from a grill above Shano's head, then a disconnected voice. "Get the men out of there. It's useless. Hurry it up!" A series of clicks and the heavy voice of the chief engineer. "Captain! Somebody's smashed the selector chamber. Engine room's full of toxia gas!"
Shano jumped. He prodded the body on the deck with his toe.
The Stardust's mechanical voice bellowed: "Engine room!" It reproduced the captain's heavy breathing and his tired voice. "We're about midway to Venus," it said. "There were two ships and we drove them off. But there may be others. They'll be coming back. They know we've been hit. We have to get away fast!"
Shano could see the captain in his mind, worried, squared face slick with moisture. Shouting into a control room mike. Trying to find out what the matter was with his space ship.
The engineer's answer came from the grill. "Impossible, sir. Engine room full of toxia gas. Not a suit aboard prepared to withstand it. And we have to keep it in there. Selector filaments won't function without the gas. Our only chance was to put a man in the engine room to repair the broken selector valve rods or keep them running by hand."
"Blast it!" roared the captain. "No way of getting in there? Can't you by-pass the selector?"
"No. It's the heart of the new cosmic drive, sir. The fuels must pass through selector valves before entering the tube chambers. Filaments will operate so long as toxia gas is there to burn, and will keep trying to open the valves and compensate for fluctuating engine temperature. But the rod pins have melted down, sir—they're common tungsten steel—and when the rods pull a valve open, they slip off and drop down, useless. It's a mess. If we could only get a man in there he might lift up the dropped end of a rod and slip it into place each time it fell, and keep the valves working and feeding fuel."
The speaker spluttered and Shano smoked thoughtfully, listening to the talk back and forth, between the captain and the engineer. He didn't understand it, but knew that everything was ended. They were broken down in space and would never make Earth. Those Uranian devils would come streaking back. Catch them floating, helpless, and blast them to bits. And he would never get home to die.
Shano coughed, and cursed his lungs. Time was when these gum-clogged lungs had saved his life. In the Plutonian mines. Gas explosions in the tunnels. Toxia gas, seeping in, burning the men's insides. But with gum-clogged lungs he'd been able to work himself clear. Just getting sick where other men had died, their insides burned out.
Shano smoked and thought.
They wouldn't even know, he told himself, squirming through the emergency exit into the engine room, and sealing it after him. And they wouldn't understand if they did. Pink mist swirled about him. Toxia gas. Shano coughed.
He squinted around at the massive, incomprehensible machinery. The guts of the space ship.
Then he saw the shattered, gold-gleaming cylinder, gas hissing from a fine nozzle, and filaments glowing bluish inside it, still working away. He saw five heavy Carrsteel rods hanging useless, on melted-down pins, and the slots their pronged ends hooked into. He looked at his hands, and shook his head.
"One try," he said to himself. "One try, Shano. One important thing in your life. Here's your opportunity. The toxia gas will get you. It'll kill you at this concentration. But you'll last for maybe twelve hours. Another man wouldn't last a minute. Another man's lungs aren't clogged with Juno gum."
He grasped a rod and lifted it, sweating under the weight, and slipped the forked end into its slot. Going home to die, he thought. Well, maybe not going home. Couldn't remember what Earth looked like anyway.
What was that again? Oh yeah—just lift them up, and when they drop off, lift them up again.
Shano coughed, and lifted the heavy rods into position. One jerked back suddenly and smoothly, and something went, "Pop, pop," behind him and machinery whirred. He lifted the rod and slipped it back on. Another jerked, pulled open a large valve, and dropped off. Shano bent, and lifted, coughing and coughing. He forgot what he was doing, mind blank the way it went when he worked. Just rhythmically fell into the job, the way a laborer does. He waited for a rod to slip and fall, then lifted it up and slipped it in place, skin sweating, joints shooting pain along his limbs. He heard the machinery working. He heard the high, howling whine of cosmic jets. He, Shano, was making the machinery go. He was running the cosmic drive.
A bell clanged somewhere. "Engine room! Engine room! We're under way! What happened?"
Silence, while Shano coughed and made the machinery go, thinking about the Earth he hadn't seen for many years.
"Captain!" the speaker bawled. "There's a man in there! Working the valve rods! Somebody is in the engine room and the gas isn't...."
Shano grinned, feeling good. Feeling happy. Lifting the heavy steel rods, driving the ship. Keeping the jets screaming and hurtling the liner Stardust toward Venus. He wondered if they'd found Rourke yet. If he could keep going for twelve hours they would get to Venus. After that....
"Home," he coughed. "Hell! Who wants to go home?"
He plucked at his agitated chest, thinking of a whole damn Uranian fleet swooping down on a spot in space, expecting to find a crippled ship there with a spy inside it. And finding nothing. Because of Shano. A useless old man.
Coughing came out all mixed up with laughing.
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What is the impact of the first flight on all the characters in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The First Man in Space by Heather Feldman.
Relevant chunks:
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
Question:
What is the impact of the first flight on all the characters in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Marsh, the only person who is to fly, is excited and scared at the same time. He can not believe he is to be the first to exit in space, but he thinks himself not brave and worthy enough, and is afraid to fail everyone. He feels the burden of responsibility for being chosen, which is increased by his duty before his parents to come back and the attention of the huge amount of spectators. Marsh's parents are extremely anxious. The mom struggles to understand why such a young boy is sent, the dad tries to joke and calm down the mom, but they are both afraid Marsh won't come back. The spectators and journalists are excited and interested. The whole team working on the project is also excited and anxious, they try to support Marsh. The Colonel is worried for Marsh, all of them take caution, check everything, and cheer Marsh up. They work on detecting every data, controlling every detail. The whole planet watches closely, while Marsh is the only one to really feel like the king of the universe. ",
"For Marsh’s parents, the first flight has a negative impact. While they are proud of him, they are scared that he will get injured or even potentially die during the flight. For Colonel Tregasker, the first flight gives him a sense of accomplishment because he is the one who oversaw Marsh’s training. He is very proud of Marsh for how far he has come. For Marsh himself, this first flight is the result of his hard work in training and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. He has prepared long for this moment, and the view that he sees from space makes all of it worthwhile.",
"There is a different impact of the first flight on all the characters in the story. For Marsh, the impact is seen the most. He is overcome with a range of emotions, fear, excitement, happiness, sadness at the prospect of never seeing his parents again. This is the chance of a lifetime for him. This is the journey of his career; to be the first ever man in space. \nThe impact on Mom and Dad is one of fear, worry and anger. They question why the program couldn't have gotten an older person to pilot the rocket, with Mom being particularly ticked off by this. It is mentioned that they always appeared to be happy when Marsh passed various exams, but secretly wished that he had failed, so he could escape the danger. \nColonel Tregasker is proud of Marsh. He is very happy with his Cadet and his achievement. It is clear that the colonel cares deeply for Marsh, hugging him, showing his fear and anxiety for what might happen. This is a great moment for him, but also a moment of great worry. \nThere is a great impact on every character in this story, including the general and Marsh's cadet friends. It is the first flight in which a man has ever gone into space, changing space exploration forever. ",
"Marsh’s parents are worried and does not want him to go since he is still very young. The doctor encourages him before his first flight. The other classmates that he trained with was going to be his successor if he has failed the trip today. The Air Force are able to study the data for month, which are brought back by Marth. The people watching was at first worried about the successfulness of the flight, but they and the reporters congratulates him once he lands. "
] |
55801
|
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
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How do Marsh's emotions change throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The First Man in Space by Heather Feldman.
Relevant chunks:
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
Question:
How do Marsh's emotions change throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"During his last night on Earth, Marsh appears to be tense and scared, blaming himself for not being as strong as he wishes to be. He also feels the anxiety of his parents and is sad to see them like that. All the day before the trip, Marsh looks at everything around as if it is the last time he sees it. He feels unprepared and uneasy about parting. At the same time, he is excited, and his pulse goes up, which makes him feel unworthy of the honor. Then Marsh eases a little and even takes a nap. The atmosphere of goodbyes with his team is warm and full of good memories. When Marsh is left alone in the cabin, he becomes scared and thinks about the spectators and his parents, wondering if he sees his home ever again The countdown adds to his anxiety and the last seconds before departure seem an eternity. Marsh tries to concentrate and distract himself from the thoughts. The voice of the general brings ease and seeing how well things go, Marsh gets excited. He feels proud and extremely impressed with the view, forgetting about caution. Suddenly he is afraid to fall and makes a wrong move, which scares him a lot. Calming down after that, Marsh is able to manage himself and complete the mission. When he gets back to Earth he is full of disbelief that he made it, and he is extremely happy to smell the air of home. ",
"Marsh is initially nervous before his trip. He feels even worse by his parents' reactions but understands that he must not miss this opportunity. When he sees the doctor briefly after arriving, he cannot help but admit that he is excited to go to space. He begins to feel more at ease after the doctor reassures him and continues to do so up until he sees the rocket. Marsh's helpless feeling and anxiety come back here since he will be going to space. Once he reaches space, however, he is excited by the entirely new perspective of the galaxy he sees in front of him. There is a brief moment where he panics in the frictionless space, but he manages to control himself and becomes more careful. He then continues to try and remain calm for the remainder of the journey back home, knowing that many of the operations required to safely land must be done calmly. ",
"In the beginning of the story, Marsh is nervous and has anxiety for the journey ahead. He is sad when talking with his parents at breakfast, not knowing if they'll see them again. As he gets to the Skyharbour, he becomes trepidation, wondering if he was the right man for the job. His nerves calm after he talks with the psychiatrist, and then more as the day progresses. He gets nervous again as the rocket takes off, fearing for his life. He is overcome with joy when he gets to exit the cabin, and see the Earth from above. He is once again stricken with fear when he looks down below, floating in space. His fear starts to creep back in on re-entry, as he could burn up. Once he makes it to the ground, he is filled with a sense of relief, breathing the air he didn't know if he'd ever breathe again. \n",
"At first, he was frightened since he even got a nightmare about it. \nWhen the psychiatrist checks for his blood pressure, he confirms with Marsh if he is excited. But he was also scared and wondered if they have the wrong man; he might fail them. After the doctor tells him that he is not the wrong man, he felt more at ease. \nAs he takes the lift to get to the platform surrounding the rocket, Marsh is not as anxious as he was during the day, but his knees felt rubbery. When he talks to the officer up there, his facial expression is twitching uncontrollably despite his effort to smile. \n\nInside the rocket, he thinks of the explosives below him that can literally blow him into nothing; he thinks of being watched by millions of people; and he thinks of his parents. It fells very long before finally getting to the 10 seconds countdown. Then he feels fear. \n\nAfter getting into the designated orbit in space, Marsh feels great to hear a human voice again. \nIt was a stunning view to see Earth from outside his rocket in space. But he suddenly has a uncontrollable panic which hits him on the rocket’s side. He bounces a few times, but did not get hurt. And he becomes calm again. He gets a little worried about the touchdown that his outside controls can provide. In the end, he lands safely. "
] |
55801
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THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The First Man in Space by Heather Feldman.
Relevant chunks:
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Cadet Marshall Farnsworth wakes up at night, frightened by the sound of rockets. He looks in the window and thinks about his upcoming trip to space, as a first man, reflecting upon the history of mankind and space interaction. The next morning he has a short but difficult talk with his anxious parents. Marsh's dad takes him to the Skyharbor, the young man feels uneasy. Then he goes through a check up at psychiatrist's and space surgeon's, revises the route, and takes a nap. Then his Colonel gives him a brief speech, and his cadet friends wish him luck. Thousands of spectators and reporters try to see Marsh on his way to the rocket. Various gadgets are put on Marsh, he rises to the platform, says warm goodbye to the Colonel, and puts the helmet on. Inside the ship Marsh is fastened and final tests take place before he is left alone with his nerves. The last five minutes are long, Marsh thinks about his planet and parents, and then the ship sets off. Minutes seem an eternity, the first phase is behind, and upon reaching the peak velocity the speed starts to drop back. The free-flight orbit is reached and Marsh hears General Forsythe's earthly and calming voice. All the indicators are good and Marsh gets excited to be the first one to leave the rocket and look at the globe from space. He takes all the precautions and the first glance \"downward\" makes him feel like the king of the universe. Suddenly, he feels like he is falling and makes a forbidden movement, which leads to him bouncing from and back to the rocket a couple times, when he has to try hard to stop. When he calms down after the fright, he starts describing what he sees. General orders Marsh to go back and he returns to his cabin. The hardest part begins, as the speed of the ship is high and needs to be reduced. When Marsh succeeds in doing so, the ship heads back to Earth. Marsh has to make a couple spirals and near the airport the braking fuel is gone. Eventually, he manages to exit and breathe the air of Earth and is attacked by the reporters, until he is left with only three men. \n",
"Cadet Marshall Farnsworth is chosen out of two hundred cadets to make man's first trip into space. He is considered one of the most stable, but he is still nervous after waking up from a nightmare. Marsh tries to sleep again, but he is unable to because of the anxious footsteps of his mother and father. He finally falls asleep until the alarm goes off in the morning and prepares himself for the big day. Marsh's parents pretend to be happy the next day, but he knows that they do not want him to go. They try to convince themselves that he will be the Farnsworth family celebrity and completely safe in the rocket. When his father drops him off, they share a brief goodbye, and he begins to go through his pre-flight examinations. Further instructions regarding Marsh's take-off time and position are given to him. He manages to sleep for a few more hours before he talks to Colonel Tregasker. The Colonel wishes him luck and brings in ten more cadets who would be Marsh's replacement should he fail the trip. He then escorts Mash to the ship once the speaker announces that there are less than thirty minutes. There are crowds of photographers and newspapermen in the area, looking for a chance to interview Marsh. However, the Colonel leads him to a blockhouse where he puts on his space gear. He puts on a multitude of gadgets, and the two of them get into the cage that takes them to the platform of the third stage. Marsh begins to feel fear, even though there are workmen and engineers preparing the compartment because he also thinks that this may be his death chamber. He says his goodbye to the Colonel, and a man hands him his helmet. He waits inside the compartment, and the rocket launches soon after. The rocket then fires, and Marsh begins to see the mach numbers rise. After seeing the other parts rise, the voice of General Forsythe speaks to him and tells him that everything is going fine so far. When Marsh gets the O.K. signal, he exits the rocket and begins eagerly describing what he sees in space, such as the rotating Earth and the Milky Way. Marsh no longer feels any fear anymore as he observes space. The General then tells him to go back to avoid further danger, and he prepares himself to return to Earth's atmosphere. He comes back safely, sees many familiar sights along the way, and prepares to land the valuable ship. The General reassures him, and he safely returns to the ground again after gliding. Many reporters come to greet him, but the police safely escort him. Only three men are allowed to follow through the cordon.",
"Cadet Marshall Farnsworth is to be the first man to ever go into space. He wakes up the morning of the day he is meant to take off, and has breakfast with his parents. His Dad drives him to the airport \"Skyharbour\" where the rocket is waiting to launch. Marsh goes through various checks with doctors to make sure he is in shape for flying. Blast off is set for 22:30. As the day goes on he becomes more calm, and goes for a nap in the general's office. He is awoken and goes to met with his CO, Colonel Tregasker. They talk for a while and then are met by Marshall's comrades, who wish him luck. The Colonel and Marshall make their way to the blockhouse, where Marshall changes into his space suit. He is plastered with different wires to convey information back to the station about his state. They move to the elevator that takes them to the door hatch of the rocket. They say their goodbyes and Marsh steps into the compartment. Some final tests are done and then the countdown begins. The rocket blasts off, Marsh being thrown back in his seat in agony. The first part of the rocket breaks off, then the second, until he is left with just his compartment outside of the atmosphere, just as planned. When Marsh gets into a steady orbit, he exits the cabin, attached to the ship by his tether. He talks to the general about what he can see of Earth. He then looks under his feet and gets the sense of falling and becomes panicked, pushing himself to the end of his tether, and then knocking against the ship, back and forth. He eventually regains himself and re-enters the cabin. After that he starts his initial descent, swerving in and out of the atmosphere to avoid burning up on re-entry. Slowly, he makes it down to the surface, using his training. He makes it back in one piece, and is greeted by crowds of people. ",
"The Air Force is getting ready for a rocket blast off the next day. And the rocket is scheduled to blast off at 10:30 PM in the evening. It will go into the orbit around Earth, and once it is stable cadet Marshall Farnsworth, the trained astronaut, will go take a trip to the outside of the rocket, in space, then it would return, carrying Marsh back to Earth. The rocket consists of three parts, where two of them will fall off after the fuel are used and before entering into the orbit. \n\nThe story starts with Marsh having a bad dream about not able to make it to space and back. Apparently, he is not the only one worried, so are his parents. The next morning, his parents tries to act as if they are glad for him, but later his mom was not able to hold it anymore, luckily Dad is able to stop her so that the morning will not be filled with sadness. After Dad drives Marsh to Skyharbor, where the rocket will be blasting, they quickly said goodbye to each other, and Marsh goes to get a physical examination and a briefing. After a quick nap, he is woken up by the colonel and greets his classmates whom he went through the trainings with. \n\nWhen it was thirty minutes until the blast off, the colonel escorts Marsh to the ship to have his gears put on except his helmet. Then, he takes the lift that gets him to the platform surrounding the rocket, where he puts on his helmet and steps into the ship to make sure everything works fine. The countdown goes to zero and the rocket rises into the sky. \n\nAs he keeps on rising, the two parts of the rocket drop as they are supposed to. Then he successfully goes into the orbit as predicted. After a few minutes, he gets the order to leave the rocket. Where he sees the stunning view of Earth from space. Despite a small accident with no injuries, his trip outside the rocket goes well. Then he is ready to get back to Earth. He uses his skills and talents, after a long time, he finally lands safely. After a few seconds of aloneness, men come running and congratulating him. "
] |
55801
|
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
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How is the theme of responsibility explored in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The First Man in Space by Heather Feldman.
Relevant chunks:
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
Question:
How is the theme of responsibility explored in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Being the first man to go to space is a task of extreme responsibility. For years, the flight was worked through to make it as safe and well-organized as possible. Due to the need to choose only one man, long training and checkouts took place, and Marsh was decided to be the best. His success is the reason his friends are not able to go and their years of training were in vain. The generals and other higher standing participants trained and chose Marsh, so he has to meet their expectations. The whole globe is watching him with interest and attention, which is an additional pressure. He has to complete the mission successfully, because he was chosen and he can’t fail, he needs to be brave, calm and concentrated. Moreover, he is responsible before his parents to come back, not to make them lose their only son. Detailed instructions were given to him and failing to follow them means proving not good enough. This flight was prepared for too long, and if he fails, he moves the exploration years back. Understanding all of that, Marsh tries to calm him down every time and reminds himself of what has to be done. He does everything with caution, and when he loses control in space, he rapidly recovers and reminds himself to be careful. Under the burden of this responsibility, Marsh doesn’t let himself to get nervous. \n",
"The theme of responsibility is explored through the story via Marsh’s own experience in space. Although he undergoes training, Marsh is still given the responsibility of being the person who makes man’s first journey into space. He is responsible when piloting the rocket, too, and can execute all of the instructions that the general gives him. Marsh can safely disconnect the cables and prevent the ship’s delicate instruments from becoming damaged when he goes out to observe. Even during the trickiest part of the operation, Marsh can manually pilot the ship back to Earth. He demonstrates excellent responsibility here, as he manages to safely land and successfully fulfills the mission. ",
"The theme of responsibility features heavily in this story. Marsh feels the responsibility of the world to succeed in this flight. He doubts whether he was the right man for the job. He feels the responsibility to have the mission be a success for not only his team, but also himself, and his own life. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, and the future of space travel depends on him. \nMom and Dad feel the responsibility to keep their child safe. They are angered by the fact that he was chosen, and wish the space program had picked a grown man. \nThe entire team at the Skyharbour have the responsibility of keeping Marsh safe. They give him a full medical check, and wire him up to know the status of his vitals. \nThe Colonel has the responsibility of keeping a boy safe that he has known for a very long time. He is his CO, and as such, is the main person responsible for him at the station. \nThe general has the responsibility to make sure everything about the mission goes smoothly. \nThere is definitely a very clear theme of responsibility throughout the story. ",
"We learn that even though Marsh’s Mom and Dad does not want him to go to space, his exploration to the space can bring valuable finding to Earth. Firstly, he was able to spot a meteor that is heading towards Earth. He reports this back. He is also able to bring data back for months of analysis. While his parents hoped he would fail the exams, he passed and becomes the first pilot going into space. It is such an honor for him. Even Marsh himself was thrilled to see Earth from space, especially since he is the first man ever. "
] |
55801
|
THE FIRST MAN INTO SPACE
Cadet Marshall Farnsworth woke from a nightmare of exploding novae and fouling rockets. After recovering from his fright, he laughed contemptuously at himself. “Here I was picked as the most stable of a group of two hundred cadets,” he thought, “and chosen to make man’s first trip into space, yet I’m shaking like a leaf.”
He got out of bed and went over to the window. From his father’s temporary apartment, he could see distant Skyharbor, the scene of the plunge into space tomorrow night. He had been awarded the frightening honor of making that trip.
10
As he watched teardrop cars whip along Phoenix, Arizona’s, double-decked streets, elevated over one another to avoid dangerous intersections and delaying stop lights, he thought back over the years; to the 1950’s, when mice and monkeys were sent up in Vikings to launch mankind’s first probing of the mysterious space beyond Earth, and the first satellites were launched; to the 1960’s, when huger, multiple-stage rockets finally conquered the problem of escape velocity; to 1975—today—when man was finally ready to send one of his own kind into the uninhabited deeps.
Marsh climbed back into bed, but sleep would not come.
In the adjoining room, he could hear the footsteps of mother and father. By their sound he knew they were the footsteps of worried people. This hurt Marsh more than his own uneasiness.
The anxiety had begun for them, he knew, when he had first signed up for space-cadet training. They had known there was an extremely high percentage of washouts, and after each test he passed, they had pretended to be glad. But Marsh knew that inwardly they had hoped he would fail, for they were aware of the ultimate goal that the space scientists were working for—the goal that had just now been reached.
Marsh finally fell into a troubled sleep that lasted until morning.
He woke early, before the alarm rang. He got up, showered, pulled on his blue-corded cadet uniform, and tugged on the polished gray boots. He took one final look around his room as though in farewell, then went out to the kitchen.
11
His folks were up ahead of time too, trying to act as though it were just another day. Dad was pretending to enjoy his morning paper, nodding only casually to Marsh as he came in. Mom was stirring scrambled eggs in the skillet, but she wasn’t a very good actor, Marsh noticed, for she furtively wiped her eyes with her free hand.
The eggs were cooked too hard and the toast had to be scraped, but no one seemed to care. The three of them sat down at the table, still speaking in monosyllables and of unimportant things. They made a pretense of eating.
“Well, Mom,” Dad suddenly said with a forced jollity that was intended to break the tension, “the Farnsworth family has finally got a celebrity in it.”
“I don’t see why they don’t send an older man!” Mom burst out, as though she had been holding it in as long as she could. “Sending a boy who isn’t even twenty-two—”
“Things are different nowadays, Mom,” Dad explained, still with the assumed calmness that masked his real feelings. “These days, men grow up faster and mature quicker. They’re stronger and more alert than older men—” His voice trailed off as if he were unable to convince himself.
“ Some body has to go,” Marsh said. “Why not a younger man without family and responsibility? That’s why they’re giving younger men more opportunities today than they used to.”
“It’s not younger men I’m talking about!” Mom blurted. “It’s you, Marsh!”
12
Dad leaned over and patted Mom on the shoulder.
“Now, Ruth, we promised not to get excited this morning.”
“I’m sorry,” Mom said weakly. “But Marsh is too young to—” She caught herself and put her hand over her mouth.
“Stop talking like that!” Dad said. “Marsh is coming back. There’ve been thousands of rockets sent aloft. The space engineers have made sure that every bug has been ironed out before risking a man’s life. Why, that rocket which Marsh is going up in is as safe as our auto in the garage, isn’t it, Marsh?”
“I hope so, Dad,” Marsh murmured.
Later, as Dad drove Marsh to the field, each brooded silently. Every scene along the way seemed to take on a new look for Marsh. He saw things that he had never noticed before. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost as if he were seeing these things for the last as well as the first time.
Finally the airport came into view. The guards at the gate recognized Marsh and ushered the Farnsworth car through ahead of scores of others that crowded the entrance. Some eager news photographers slipped up close and shot off flash bulbs in Marsh’s eyes.
Skyharbor, once a small commercial field, had been taken over by the Air Force in recent years and converted into the largest rocket experimental center in the United States.
13
Dad drove up to the building that would be the scene of Marsh’s first exhaustive tests and briefings. He stopped the car, and Marsh jumped out. Their good-by was brief. Marsh saw his father’s mouth quiver. There was a tightness in his own throat. He had gone through any number of grueling tests to prove that he could take the rigors of space, but not one of them had prepared him for the hardest moments of parting.
When Dad had driven off, Marsh reported first to the psychiatrist who checked his condition.
“Pulse fast, a rise in blood pressure,” he said.
“You’re excited, aren’t you, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh admitted. “Maybe they’ve got the wrong man, sir. I might fail them.”
The doctor grinned. “They don’t have the wrong man,” he said. “They might have, with a so-called iron-nerved fellow. He could contain his tension and fears until later, until maybe the moment of blast-off. Then he’d let go, and when he needed his calmest judgment he wouldn’t have it. No, Marshall, there isn’t a man alive who could make this history-making flight without some anxiety. Forget it. You’ll feel better as the day goes on. I’ll see you once more before the blast-off.”
Marsh felt more at ease already. He went on to the space surgeon, was given a complete physical examination, and was pronounced in perfect condition. Then began his review briefing on everything he would encounter during the flight.
14
Blast-off time was for 2230, an hour and a half before midnight. Since at night, in the Western Hemisphere, Earth was masking the sun, the complications of excessive temperatures in the outer reaches were avoided during the time Marsh would be outside the ship. Marsh would occupy the small upper third section of a three-stage rocket. The first two parts would be jettisoned after reaching their peak velocities. Top speed of the third stage would carry Marsh into a perpetual-flight orbit around Earth, along the route that a permanent space station was to be built after the results of the flight were studied. After spending a little while in this orbit, Marsh would begin the precarious journey back to Earth, in gliding flight.
He got a few hours of sleep after sunset. When an officer shook him, he rose from the cot he had been lying on in a private room of General Forsythe, Chief of Space Operations.
“It’s almost time, son,” the officer said. “Your CO wants to see you in the outside office.”
Marsh went into the adjoining room and found his cadet chief awaiting him. The youth detected an unusual warmth about the severe gentleman who previously had shown only a firm, uncompromising attitude. Colonel Tregasker was past middle age, and his white, sparse hair was smoothed down close to his head in regulation neatness.
15
“Well, this is it, Marshall,” the colonel said.
“How I envy you this honor of being the first human to enter space. However, I do feel that a part of me is going along too, since I had a small share in preparing you for the trip. If the training was harsh at times, I believe that shortly you will understand the reason for it.”
“I didn’t feel that the Colonel was either too soft or strict, sir,” Marsh said diplomatically.
A speaker out on the brilliantly lit field blared loudly in the cool desert night: “X minus forty minutes.”
“We can’t talk all night, Marshall,” the colonel said briskly. “You’ve got a job to do. But first, a few of your friends want to wish you luck.” He called into the anteroom, “You may come in, gentlemen!”
There filed smartly into the room ten youths who had survived the hard prespace course with Marsh and would be his successors in case he failed tonight. They formed a line and shook hands with Marsh. The first was Armen Norton who had gotten sick in the rugged centrifuge at a force of 9 G’s, then had rallied to pass the test.
“Good luck, Marsh,” he said.
Next was lanky Lawrence Egan who had been certain he would wash out during navigation phase in the planetarium. “All the luck in the world, Marsh,” he added.
Each cadet brought back a special memory of his training as they passed before him, wishing him success.
16
When they had gone and the speaker outside had announced: “X minus thirty minutes,” the colonel said that he and Marsh had better be leaving. Colonel Tregasker was to be Marsh’s escort to the ship.
Photographers and newspapermen swarmed about them as they climbed into the jeep that was to take them to the launching site farther out on the field. Questions were flung at the two from all sides, but the colonel deftly maneuvered the jeep through the mob and sped off over the asphalt.
At the blast-off site, Marsh could see that the police had their hands full keeping out thousands of spectators who were trying to get into the closed-off area. The field was choked with a tide of humanity milling about in wild confusion. Giant searchlights, both at the airport and in other parts of Phoenix, directed spears of light on the towering rocket that held the interest of all the world tonight. There was one light, far larger than the rest, with powerful condensing lenses and connected to a giant radar screen, which would guide Marsh home from his trip among the stars.
A high wire fence surrounded the launching ramp and blockhouses. International scientists and dignitaries with priorities formed a ring around the fence, but even they were not allowed inside the small circle of important activity. The guards waved the colonel and Marsh through the gate.
17
Marsh had spent many weeks in a mock-up of the tiny third stage in which he was to spend his time aloft, but he had never been close to the completely assembled ship until this moment. The three stages had been nicknamed, “Tom,” “Dick,” and “Harry.” Marsh swallowed as his eyes roved up the side of the great vessel, part of a project that had cost millions to perfect and was as high as a four-story building.
The gigantic base, “Big Tom,” was the section that would have the hardest job to do, that of thrusting the rocket through the densest part of the atmosphere, and this was a great deal larger than the other sections. Marsh knew that most of the ship’s bulk was made up of the propellant fuel of hydrazine hydrate and its oxidizer, nitric acid.
“We’re going into that blockhouse over there,” Colonel Tregasker said. “You’ll don your space gear in there.”
First a multitude of gadgets with wires were fastened to the cadet’s wrists, ankles, nose, and head. Marsh knew this to be one of the most important phases of the flight—to find out a man’s reaction to space flight under actual rocketing conditions. Each wire would telemeter certain information by radio back to the airport. After a tight inner G suit had been put on to prevent blackout, the plastic and rubber outer garment was zipped up around Marsh, and then he was ready except for his helmet, which would not be donned until later.
18
Marsh and the colonel went back outside. The open-cage elevator was lowered from the top of the big latticed platform that surrounded the rocket. The two got into the cage, and it rose with them. Marsh had lost most of his anxiety and tension during the activities of the day, but his knees felt rubbery in these final moments as the elevator carried him high above the noisy confusion of the airport. This was it.
As they stepped from the cage onto the platform of the third stage, Marsh heard the speaker below call out: “X minus twenty minutes.”
There were eleven engineers and workmen on the platform readying the compartment that Marsh would occupy. Marsh suddenly felt helpless and alone as he faced the small chamber that might very well be his death cell. Its intricate dials and wires were staggering in their complexity.
Marsh turned and shook hands with Colonel Tregasker.
“Good-by, sir,” he said in a quavering voice.
“I hope I remember everything the Corps taught me.” He tried to smile, but his facial muscles twitched uncontrollably.
“Good luck, son—lots of it,” the officer said huskily. Suddenly he leaned forward and embraced the youth with a firm, fatherly hug. “This is not regulations,” he mumbled gruffly, “but hang regulations!” He turned quickly and asked to be carried down to the ground.
A man brought Marsh’s helmet and placed it over his head, then clamped it to the suit. Knobs on the suit were twisted, and Marsh felt a warm, pressurized helium-oxygen mixture fill his suit and headpiece.
19
Marsh stepped through the hatch into the small compartment. He reclined in the soft contour chair, and the straps were fastened by one of the engineers over his chest, waist, and legs. The wires connected to various parts of his body had been brought together into a single unit in the helmet. A wire cable leading from the panel was plugged into the outside of the helmet to complete the circuit.
Final tests were run off to make sure everything was in proper working order, including the two-way short-wave radio that would have to penetrate the electrical ocean of the ionosphere. Then the double-hatch air lock was closed. Through his helmet receiver, Marsh could hear the final minutes and seconds being called off from inside the blockhouse.
“Everything O.K.?” Marsh was asked by someone on the platform.
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied.
“Then you’re on your own,” were the final ominous words.
“X minus five minutes,” called the speaker.
20
It was the longest five minutes that Marsh could remember. He was painfully aware of his cramped quarters. He thought of the tons of explosive beneath him that presently would literally blow him sky-high. And he thought of the millions of people the world over who, at this moment, were hovering at radios and TV’s anxiously awaiting the dawn of the space age. Finally he thought of Dad and Mom, lost in that multitude of night watchers, and among the few who were not primarily concerned with the scientific aspect of the experiment. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
“X minus sixty seconds!”
Marsh knew that a warning flare was being sent up, to be followed by a whistle and a cloud of smoke from one of the blockhouses. As he felt fear trying to master him, he began reviewing all the things he must remember and, above all, what to do in an emergency.
“X minus ten seconds—five—four—three—two—one—FIRE!”
There was a mighty explosion at Skyharbor.
The initial jolt which Marsh felt was much fiercer than the gradually built up speed of the whirling centrifuge in training. He was crushed deeply into his contour chair. It felt as though someone were pressing on his eyeballs; indeed, as if every organ in his body were clinging to his backbone. But these first moments would be the worst. A gauge showed a force of 7 G’s on him—equal to half a ton.
He watched the Mach numbers rise on the dial in front of his eyes on an overhead panel. Each Mach number represented that much times the speed of sound, 1,090 feet per second, 740 miles an hour.
Marsh knew “Big Tom” would blast for about a minute and a half under control of the automatic pilot, at which time it would drop free at an altitude of twenty-five miles and sink Earthward in a metal mesh ’chute.
21
Marsh’s hurting eyes flicked to the outside temperature gauge. It was on a steady 67 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, and would be until he reached twenty miles. A reflecting prism gave him a square of view of the sky outside. The clear deep blue of the cloud-free stratosphere met his eyes.
Mach 5, Mach 6, Mach 7 passed very quickly. He heard a rumble and felt a jerk. “Big Tom” was breaking free. The first hurdle had been successfully overcome, and the ship had already begun tilting into its trajectory.
There was a new surge of agony on his body as the second stage picked up the acceleration at a force of 7 G’s again. Marsh clamped his jaws as the force pulled his lips back from his teeth and dragged his cheek muscles down. The Mach numbers continued to rise—11, 12, 13—to altitude 200 miles, the outer fringe of the earth’s atmosphere. There was a slight lifting of the pressure on his body. The rocket was still in the stratosphere, but the sky was getting purple.
Mach 14—10,000 miles an hour.
“Dick” would jettison any moment. Marsh had been aloft only about four minutes, but it had seemed an age, every tortured second of it.
22
There was another rumble as the second stage broke free. Marsh felt a new surge directly beneath him as his own occupied section, “Harry,” began blasting. It was comforting to realize he had successfully weathered those tons of exploding hydrazine and acid that could have reduced him to nothing if something had gone wrong. Although his speed was still building up, the weight on him began to ease steadily as his body’s inertia finally yielded to the sickeningly swift acceleration.
The speedometer needle climbed to Mach 21, the peak velocity of the rocket, 16,000 miles per hour. His altitude was 350 miles—man’s highest ascent. Slowly then, the speedometer began to drop back. Marsh heard the turbo pumps and jets go silent as the “lift” fuel was spent and rocket “Harry” began its free-flight orbit around Earth.
The ship had reached a speed which exactly counterbalanced the pull of gravity, and it could, theoretically, travel this way forever, provided no other outside force acted upon it. The effect on Marsh now was as if he had stopped moving. Relieved of the viselike pressure, his stomach and chest for a few seconds felt like inflated balloons.
“Cadet Farnsworth,” the voice of General Forsythe spoke into his helmet receiver, “are you all right?”
“Yes, sir,” Marsh replied. “That is, I think so.”
It was good to hear a human voice again, something to hold onto in this crazy unreal world into which he had been hurtled.
“We’re getting the electronic readings from your gauges O.K.,” the voice went on. “The doctor says your pulse is satisfactory under the circumstances.”
It was queer having your pulse read from 350 miles up in the air.
23
Marsh realized, of course, that he was not truly in the “air.” A glance at his air-pressure gauge confirmed this. He was virtually in a vacuum. The temperature and wind velocity outside might have astounded him if he were not prepared for the readings. The heat was over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind velocity was of hurricane force! But these figures meant nothing because of the sparseness of air molecules. Temperature and wind applied only to the individual particles, which were thousands of feet apart.
“How is your cosmic-ray count?” asked the general.
Marsh checked the C-ray counter on the panel from which clicking sounds were coming. “It’s low, sir. Nothing to worry about.”
Cosmic rays, the most powerful emanations known, were the only radiation in space that could not be protected against. But in small doses they had been found not to be dangerous.
“As soon as our recorders get more of the figures your telemeter is giving us,” the operations chief said, “you can leave the rocket.”
When Marsh got the O.K. a few minutes later, he eagerly unstrapped the belts around his body. He could hardly contain his excitement at being the first person to view the globe of Earth from space. As he struggled to his feet, the lightness of zero gravity made him momentarily giddy, and it took some minutes for him to adjust to the terribly strange sensation.
24
He had disconnected the cable leading from his helmet to the ship’s transmitter and switched on the ship’s fast-lens movie camera that would photograph the area covered by “Harry.” Then he was ready to go outside. He pressed a button on the wall, and the first air-lock hatch opened. He floated into the narrow alcove and closed the door in the cramped chamber behind him. He watched a gauge, and when it showed normal pressure and temperature again, he opened the outside hatch, closing it behind him. Had Marsh permitted the vacuum of space to contact the interior of the ship’s quarters, delicate instruments would have been ruined by the sudden decompression and loss of heat. Marsh fastened his safety line to the ship so that there was no chance of his becoming separated from it.
Then he looked “downward,” to experience the thrill of his life. Like a gigantic relief map, the panorama of Earth stretched across his vision. A downy blanket of gray atmosphere spread over the whole of it, and patches of clouds were seen floating like phantom shapes beneath the clear vastness of the stratosphere. It was a stunning sight for Marsh, seeing the pinpoint lights of the night cities extending from horizon to horizon. It gave him an exhilarating feeling of being a king over it all.
25
Earth appeared to be rotating, but Marsh knew it was largely his own and the rocket’s fast speed that was responsible for the illusion. As he hung in this region of the exosphere, he was thankful for his cadet training in zero gravity. A special machine, developed only in recent years, simulated the weightlessness of space and trained the cadets for endurance in such artificial conditions.
“Describe some of the things you see, Marshall,” General Forsythe said over Marsh’s helmet receiver.
“I’ve just cut in a recorder.”
“It’s a scene almost beyond description, sir,” Marsh said into the helmet mike. “The sky is thickly powdered with stars. The Milky Way is very distinct, and I can make out lots of fuzzy spots that must be star clusters and nebulae and comets. Mars is like an extremely bright taillight, and the moon is so strong it hurts my eyes as much as the direct sun does on earth.”
Marsh saw a faintly luminous blur pass beyond the ship. It had been almost too sudden to catch. He believed it to be a meteor diving Earthward at a speed around forty-five miles a second. He reported this to the general.
As he brought his eyes down from the more distant fixtures of space to those closer by on Earth, a strange thing happened. He was suddenly seized with a fear of falling, although his zero-gravity training had been intended to prepare him against this very thing. A cold sweat come out over his body, and an uncontrollable panic threatened to take hold of him.
26
He made a sudden movement as though to catch himself. Forgetting the magnification of motion in frictionless space and his own weightlessness, he was shot quickly to the end of his safety line like a cracked whip. His body jerked at the taut end and then sped swiftly back in reaction toward the ship, head foremost. A collision could crack his helmet, exposing his body to decompression, causing him to swell like a balloon and finally explode.
In the grip of numbing fear, only at the last moment did he have the presence of mind to flip his body in a half-cartwheel and bring his boots up in front of him for protection. His feet bumped against the rocket’s side, and the motion sent him hurtling back out to the end of the safety line again. This back-and-forth action occurred several times before he could stop completely.
“I’ve got to be careful,” he panted to himself, as he thought of how close his space career had come to being ended scarcely before it had begun.
General Forsythe cut in with great concern, wondering what had happened. When Marsh had explained and the general seemed satisfied that Marsh had recovered himself, he had Marsh go on with his description.
His senseless fear having gone now, Marsh looked down calmly, entranced as the features of the United States passed below his gaze. He named the cities he could identify, also the mountain ranges, lakes, and rivers, explaining just how they looked from 350 miles up. In only a fraction of an hour’s time, the rocket had traversed the entire country and was approaching the twinkling phosphorescence of the Atlantic.
27
Marsh asked if “Tom” and “Dick” had landed safely.
“‘Tom’ landed near Roswell, New Mexico,” General Forsythe told him, “and the ’chute of the second section has been reported seen north of Dallas. I think you’d better start back now, Marshall. It’ll take us many months to analyze all the information we’ve gotten. We can’t contact you very well on the other side of the world either, and thirdly, I don’t want you exposed to the sun’s rays outside the atmosphere in the Eastern Hemisphere any longer than can be helped.”
Marsh tugged carefully on his safety line and floated slowly back toward the ship. He entered the air lock. Then, inside, he raised the angle of his contour chair to upright position, facing the console of the ship’s manual controls for the glide Earthward. He plugged in his telemeter helmet cable and buckled one of the straps across his waist.
Since he was still moving at many thousands of miles an hour, it would be suicide to plunge straight downward. He and the glider would be turned into a meteoric torch. Rather, he would have to spend considerable time soaring in and out of the atmosphere in braking ellipses until he reached much lower speed. Then the Earth’s gravitational pull would do the rest.
28
This was going to be the trickiest part of the operation, and the most dangerous. Where before, Marsh had depended on automatic controls to guide him, now much of the responsibility was on his own judgment. He remembered the many hours he had sweated through to log his flying time. Now he could look back on that period in his training and thank his lucky stars for it.
He took the manual controls and angled into the atmosphere. He carefully watched the AHF dial—the atmospheric heat friction gauge. When he had neared the dangerous incendiary point, with the ship having literally become red-hot, he soared into the frictionless vacuum again. He had to keep this up a long time in order to reduce his devastating speed.
It was something of a shock to him to leave the black midnight of Earth’s slumbering side for the brilliant hemisphere where the people of Europe and Asia were going about their daytime tasks. He would have liked to study this other half of the world which he had glimpsed only a few times before in his supersonic test flights, but he knew this would have to wait for future flights.
Finally, after a long time, his velocity was slowed enough so that the tug of gravity was stronger than the rocket’s ability to pull up out of the atmosphere. At this point, Marsh cut in “Harry’s” forward braking jets to check his falling speed.
“There’s something else to worry about,” he thought to himself. “Will old Harry hold together or will he fly apart in the crushing atmosphere?”
29
The directional radio signals from the powerful Skyharbor transmitter were growing stronger as Marsh neared the shores of California. He could see the winking lights of San Diego and Los Angeles, and farther inland the swinging thread that was the beacon at Skyharbor. All planes in his path of flight had been grounded for the past few hours because of the space flight. The only ground light scanning the skies was the gigantic space beacon in Phoenix.
When Marsh reached Arizona, he began spiraling downward over the state to kill the rest of his altitude and air speed. Even now the plane was a hurtling supersonic metal sliver streaking through the night skies like a comet. He topped the snow-capped summits of the towering San Francisco Peaks on the drive southward, and he recognized the sprawling serpent of the Grand Canyon. Then he was in the lower desert regions of moon-splashed sand and cactus. Although the fire-hot temperature of the outer skin had subsided, there had been damage done to the walls and instruments, and possibly to other parts, too. Marsh was worried lest his outside controls might be too warped to give him a good touchdown, if indeed he could get down safely at all.
A few thousand feet up, Marsh lowered his landing gear. Now the only problem left was to land himself and the valuable ship safely inside the narrow parallels of the airstrip. He circled the airport several times as his altitude continued to plummet.
30
The meter fell rapidly. His braking rocket fuel was gone now. From here on in, he would be on gliding power alone.
“Easy does it, Marshall,” the general said quietly into his ear. “You’re lining up fine. Level it out a little and keep straight with the approach lights. That’s fine. You’re just about in.”
The lights of the airport seeming to rush up at him, Marsh felt a jolt as the wheels touched ground on the west end of the runway. He kept the ship steady as it scurried along the smooth asphalt, losing the last of its once tremendous velocity. The plane hit the restraining wire across the strip and came to a sudden stop, shoving Marsh hard against the single safety belt he wore. Finally, incredibly, the ship was still and he was safe.
He unfastened his strap and removed his space helmet. The heat of the compartment brought the sweat out on his face. He rose on wobbly legs and pressed the buttons to the hatches. The last door flew open to admit the cool, bracing air of Earth which he had wondered if he would ever inhale again.
His aloneness was over then, suddenly and boisterously, as men swarmed over him with congratulations, eager questions, and looks of respect. Reporters’ flash bulbs popped, and he felt like a new Lindbergh as he was pulled down to the ground and mobbed. Finally the police came to his rescue and pushed back the curiosity seekers and newspapermen. Then only three men were allowed through the cordon.
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Describe the setting of the story
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Yesterday House by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
Question:
Describe the setting of the story
Answer:
|
[
"One day, Jack Barry goes to explore the little islands off the coast of Maine. He docks his boat on the first island inside the cove, looking back through its high walls at thousands of tiny islands, dotting the blue sea, and the thin line that is Maine in the distance. Another island is revealed. It is connected to the first by a spine of rocks. At the near side of the second island is a short slope, covered in grass and trees. Beyond the trees is a huge chicken wire fence, topped with barbed wire. Beside the fence is an oak tree, with a low hanging branch. Beyond the fence is a quaint little cottage. There is a neatly mowed lawn in front of it, with a gravel driveway reaching out into the distance. There is another house on the summit of the island, a treehouse, and a chug boat moored in the bay. Jack then returns to the stark, square home of the Kesseriches. There is a solemn, cold air to the place, one that is reflected in Mrs Kesserich. The story then flashes back to the setting in which Mary Alice and Martin Kesserich lived. It is a nondescript place, but one that is open enough to ride horses in, hills sloping down onto train tracks. ",
"The beginning of the story takes place on an island far from Wood's Hole off the coast of Maine, with a quiet, narrow cove that opens into a rocky and green shore. There is another island connected to the first by a spine of rocks, and through the trees and past a fence of barbed wire there is a quaint cottage. The cottage is white with a gravel driveway, and it is decorated with dainty vintage furniture. The inside of the cottage is also decorated with old furniture, dark and brassy. The story also takes place at the Kesserich's residence, a large, lavish house.",
"The story is initially set on an island that Jack sails to with his boat. The island has rocky ledges by the water and a little green sloop with more rocks and oaks. As he goes further, he notices another higher island that is joined by a rocky spine. The landward part of the spine houses another cove, and he even sees the spheres of sea urchins. There are also many branches of oak and a barbed mesh fence surrounding a white Cape Cod cottage. The cottage itself has a radio aerial stretched along the length of the roof. There is also a short, square-lined ancient Essex parked near the cottage too. Inside the cottage, there is solid old furniture, a small-windowed room, a fireplace, and brass andirons. When he visits Martin Kesserich’s house, it is white and weathered on the outside, with sharp-paned windows. However, the inside of the house has dark, gleaming furniture, Persian rugs, and bronze vases.",
"The story begins on an island in a narrow quiet cove near the bustling Atlantic with rocks all around and a boat carried away by wind. The place is unusually quiet compared to others on Earth, surrounded with steepness at first, and going downhill further. The island is surrounded by other islands. Further into the trees there is a huge fence with barbed wire and a mown lawn, a cottage and an ancient car are inside. A woman enters the car and drives away. A girl emerges soon with a newspaper, puts it on the table and watches a squirrel on the lawn. After sitting at the table outside with glasses of lemonade, the girl and the stranger enter the house. The room is dark and small-windowed with old furniture and a fireplace. From there, Jack runs through the lawn, jumps over the fence, runs through the oaks and rocky banks towards his boat and sails to the cross waves. From the middle of the waves and the wind the island seems small. The story moves to Kesserich's house which is a simple white cube with a cupola from the outside but luxurious and dark inside. Jack talks to Mrs. Kesserich in the drawing room and then they move to the gloomy cabinet. Next day Jack wakes up in an empty house and he goes to the same island to visit Mary. The setting changes - it is no longer still, conveying the eerie mood. "
] |
50905
|
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Yesterday House by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Jack Barry is a biology student, who sets sail on his boat \"Annie O\". He has sailed out to the furthest island off the coast of Maine. He gets to the shore and docks his boat. He sets out to explore the island. Once he reaches the summit, he finds that there is another island, connected by a thin line of rocks to the one he is on. He climbs down the slope, onto the rocks and crosses to the other side. He arrives at a gate, which he manages to overcome. Beyond the fence is a cottage, with a lawn. The whole scene is old fashioned and slightly eerie. An elderly woman comes out of the house, gets in an old car and drives away. A pretty girl, dressed like a flapper comes out. Jack walks over to her. She asks if he is the man who sends her little boxes. She tells him she lives here with her aunts. They talk for a while, Jack telling her about his professor \" Martin Kesserich\", whom he's staying with. The girl tells Jack her name is Mary Alice Pope. She says she's never been to the mainland, and that she's never met anyone her own age, let alone a man. She explains to him that every morning she receives a little box with a gift inside, and a note, signed by \"Your Lover\". She tells him she was born in the middle of the first world war, and that the year is 1933. Jack tries to convince her that it is in fact 1951. She doesn't believe him. They hear her aunt's car returning, so Jack leaves, telling her he'll be back tomorrow. He makes his way back to the Annie O. Once at sea, he sees the chug boat of one of Mary Alice's aunts, who points what looks like a rifle at him, before turning away to go back to the island. When Jack returns to his professor's home, he asks Mrs Kesserich about Mary Alice. She informs Jack that Mary Alice was the love of her husband's life, who died in 1933. Martin arrives home, and begins a hypothetical discussion with Jack about the possibility of recreating a human being. If you could take the same DNA as the original, and put the copy in the same circumstances as the one before, they would be the same. He tells Jack that he won't be here the following day. Jack wakes up the next morning and sets off for the little island. He brings with him newspapers from the present day to try and convince Mary Alice the truth, that it is in fact 1951, and not 1933. He tells her that she has been a victim of a conspiracy to make her believe it is a different year. He asks her to come back to the mainland with her. She then tells him that she can't, as the man who sends her the boxes is coming tonight. ",
"Jack Barry is a biology student under Professor Martin Kesserich, spending the summer studying marine biology. Though he is advised not to sail to the farther islands, one day he decides to anyway, taking his sailboat to a quiet cove. As he sets foot on the island and begins to explore, he realizes that there is another island hidden behind it. Awestruck, Jack heads towards the island and comes across a barbed fence, and beyond it, a cottage. He watches as a woman dressed in a long lace dress enters a car in the driveway and drives off. He then sees a girl in a white dress come out of the cottage, holding a newspaper. Jack approaches the girl, startling her, and she asks him whether he is the man who has been sending her boxes. Jack asks the girl questions, revealing that the woman from earlier is the girl's aunt, who brings her newspapers and other things from the mainland while she remains on the island. The girl offers Jack some lemonade, and he introduces himself, and in return the girl gives her name: Mary Alice Pope. Mary reveals that Jack is the first man she has met in real life, and that though she feels loneliness, she is greeted each morning with a small box containing a gift, all addressed from her \"lover\". Upon asking when the last time Mary visited the mainland was, she says that she was born eighteen years ago, in the middle of the World War. Perplexed, Jack notices that the newspaper Mary is holding is dated 1933. He asks her about the old newspaper, but Mary believes the newspaper is recent, that the current date is 1933 and not 1953, the actual date. Inside the cottage, Jack notices an old recording playing. In a terrified panic, Jack hurries back to his ship as Mary's aunt returns, promising to be back soon. As Jack scrambles to his boat and heads back home, he notices another boat overtake him, steered by a woman resembling those back on the island, but the boat turns back around. Back at the Kesserich's place, Jack asks Mrs. Kesserich if she knows of Mary Alice Pope. Mrs. Kesserich explains that Mary Alice Pope was Martin's fiancee, who died in an accident in 1933; Martin was intensely in love with her, but his sisters disliked her, and one night while waiting for Martin to arrive by train, she fell into the tracks and was killed. Suddenly, Martin enters, eager to tell Jack about his new discoveries about recreating individuals; specifically, about how it could be achieved if you replicated environments for both individuals. Jack comes to a realization, and the next morning he hurries over to the island. He brings recent newspapers for Mary, explaining that she is being manipulated to believe that it is 1933 on purpose. Mary is reluctant and frightened, and Jack tells Mary to follow him.",
"Jack Barry sails his boat called the Annie O into a cove. Once he is close enough to the ledge, he scrambles onshore and throws a line around a boulder. He has sailed to the farthest island out from the coast of Maine and decides to look around some more. He enjoys exploring but is surprised to see signs of human life on the island. He sees an older woman come out to drive an ancient Essex. Soon after, a younger girl in a white silk dress emerges too. Jack takes this opportunity to speak to her, and she asks if he is the one sending little boxes. When he says no and explains his reason for being on the island, she says that she and her three aunts live in the area. He tells her that he is a Biology student studying marine ecology under Professor Kesserich, the greatest living biologist. The girl introduces herself as Mary Alice Pope, and they have a conversation about why Mary must be alone all the time. She tells him that she receives boxes from and letters somebody signed ‘Your Lover’ for as long as she can remember. Jack notices that she has a paper from 1933, and she tries to convince him that it is from the day before yesterday. Mary brings him into the house to show him more proof, and he finds it extremely odd. He then leaves the island on his boat once they hear her aunts coming back. Jack then visits Mrs. Kesserich, who informs him that the original Mary Alice Pope was Martin Kesserich’s fiancee and died in an accident in 1933. She explains how his sisters, Hilda and Hani, hated her for stealing Martin away. However, when the three of them went to visit him during his research on growth and fertilization, they could not prevent Mary Alice’s death. Suddenly, Martin Kesserich comes home. Martin and Jack then have a conversation about individuality, to which the professor reveals the possibility of controlling heredity by will. Jack begins to grow concerned, but Kesserich dismisses his thoughts and changes the topic. The next day, Jack buys half a dozen newspapers when he has his clam chowder and goes back to the island to find Mary Alice. She tells him to go away quickly because he is a wicked man, but he shows her the newspapers. Although Mary Alice tries to reason, he tells her to come with him to prove that she is being made to live a lie that has cut her off from the world.\n",
"A man observes a quiet cove and a boat for a while, then he moves into the island he has disembarked on, climbs a fence and finds himself inside a huge cottage garden. He sees a woman driving away in an ancient car and then a girl with a newspaper. The stranger greets her and she is terrified as she has never seen a man or anyone except her aunts before. She takes him for someone who has been sending her boxes with some presents accompanied by a note from 'your lover'. Turns out, the girl lives with two aunts who bring her newspapers, books and movies, while she stays home and never goes to the mainland. The man introduces himself as Jack Barry and tells about his marine ecology research for a great biologist Professor Kesserich. Jack lives with the professor and his wife, who told him not to go to these islands and thus stimulated his curiosity. Mary, the girl, tells about being born eighteen years ago in the middle of World War I and startled when Jack sees a headline about Hitler in her newspaper. The girl claims this newspaper dated the year 1933 is two days old while the man knows it is the year 1953. Jack follows her into the house and hears old news on the radio and an approaching car, Mary asks him to leave. He runs towards his boat and sets sail, far away he sees a motorboat and a woman with a rifle. Back home Mrs. Kesserich tells him Mary Alice Pope was Martin Kesserich's fiance and died in a railway accident in 1933. She also shows a photo of the girl Jack met earlier that day. Martin was deeply in love with Mary and his sisters hated her for that. One day all three of them were waiting for Martin's train on their horses and Mary's rushed before the train. Suddenly, the professor returns home and his wife's story ends. The two men talk about biology and the professor brings up the topic of recreating the same individuals. Next day Jack buys modern newspapers and visits Mary. Jack proves to her that the year is 1953 and begs to come with him to the mainland. The girl insists that she has to wait for the man sending her boxes who is coming that night. Jack realizes with terror the man is the professor. \n"
] |
50905
|
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
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Why are the newspapers such an important part of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Yesterday House by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
Question:
Why are the newspapers such an important part of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The newspapers are such an important part of the story because they are an indicator as to the different characters' understanding of the time period. On the island, Mary Alice is surrounded by many items and artefacts to gaslight her into thinking that the year is 1933. These include the old fashioned car and radio, which plays news from the past. The one main item used to convince her are the newspapers. Hani and Hilda, who refer to themselves as her \"aunts\", give her a new newspaper every day with the date on it. It is a way for her to keep track of the passing time, albeit incorrect. When Jack Barry sees these newspapers and exclaims that they are wrong, Mary Alice is understandably shocked, and doesn't believe him. She doesn't know that newspapers aren't supposed to be yellow, because to her, newspapers have always been yellow. They are also very important to her because even though they are false, they are her only connection to what the outside world is like, apart from the radio, film and books. They are the real time news of what is happening in the world. At the end of the story, Jack Barry takes some current newspapers, in the hopes that he can convince her that the ones she possesses are decades old, and that she is, in fact, living in 1951. She doesn't believe him at first, pointing out that the papers he has could be fake, but when he states that only old papers are yellow, it seems that she begins to believe him. ",
"The newspaper that Mary is holding when Jack first meets her is visibly old and yellowed, and dated from 1933. This newspaper is what initially makes Jack realize that something is off about Mary and the island. The newspapers are a critical part of Martin's plan in recreating his fiancee in a new individual. He delivers the old newspapers to make Mary Alice believe that the events are happening in real time. In fact, when Jack tries to explain to Mary Alice that she is being manipulated, she uses the old newspapers as her own proof that she is truly in 1933.",
"Newspapers are an important part of the story because they reveal the lies told to Mary Alice. When she first meets Jack, she shows him the yellowed newspaper and says that it is the morning news from the day before yesterday. When Jack points out that the paper is from many years ago, she refuses to believe him and even implies that he is lying to her. The newspapers also help lead Jack to ask Mrs. Kesserich about Mary Alice Pope and why she believes she is living in 1933. Later, the newspaper from present-day that Jack buys finally convinces Mary Alice that she is living in a simulated lie. Although she is initially suspicious, he does manage to make her see the truth and question why the people around her would lie to her. ",
"For the girl the newspapers are almost the only way to learn something about the world and to divert herself as she is never brought to the mainland. They are also the way Jack learns about her being tricked. He proves his point of it being the year 1953 also by bringing newspapers. Mary's newspapers are yellow which proves their age. The tool for creating the lie and the tool for destroying it is the same in the story. With the help of contemporary newspapers, Jack is able to convince the girl to believe him and to save her from deception. The whole plan of the professor is ruined mainly because of the newspapers. "
] |
50905
|
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
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Who is Martin Kesserich, and what has happened to him in his past?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Yesterday House by Fritz Leiber.
Relevant chunks:
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
Question:
Who is Martin Kesserich, and what has happened to him in his past?
Answer:
|
[
"Martin Kesserich is a biologist and professor. He lives in a coastal town in Main with his wife. He has taken in Jack Barry, to live with and study under him. He moved to America long ago from Hungary with his two sisters, Hani and Hilda. In America, he meets Mary Alice Pope, a young beautiful, intelligent girl whom he falls in love with. They plan a life together. He will build a house for them to live in and raise a family in. They will travel the world together, he will teach her Hungarian. They will marry. Soon before the day they planned to be their wedding day, Martin is called away to business. He takes the train home after the journey. On his way back, Mary Alice rides on horseback with his two sisters to greet him at the station. But, as Mary Alice sits on her horse on top of a slope overlooking the train tracks, the horse becomes spooked, and gallops down to the rail. She is thrown onto the railway line. Martin sees this, and immediately throws himself out of the moving train to save her. But it's too late. Before he can reach her, she is crushed by the train. He sits, heartbroken, with her body in his hands. Years later, he marries Mrs Kesserich, whom he doesn't seem to have any affection towards, mainly ignoring each other. Treating each other with coldness and a lack of love. ",
"Martin Kesserich is a renowned biologist and professor. He has done a wide range of research and study on topics such as fertilization, heredity, and growth. Despite his success and achievement, Martin has had a rough past. Arriving to America from Hungary with his sisters, he soon fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. The two were infatuated with each other, despite his sisters, Hani and Hilda, despising Mary. One evening, Mary is killed in a railroad accident, and Martin witnesses the death of his fiancee.",
"Martin Kesserich is a famous biologist, physiologist, and geneticist. Jack stays as a student and researches with him as well. In the past, he had come from Hungary with his two sisters Hilda and Hani. He had an intense love for Alice Mary Pope, while his sisters were greatly devoted to him. He was guided by his love and planned many things for the two of them, including travel plans to Buenos Aires, teaching Mary Hungarian to go to Buda-Pesth, and even when he will occupy a chair at the university. He eventually lost Mary Alice in a railway accident when she lost control of her horse during a ride down to the station. ",
"Martin Kesserich is a great biologist, the greatest in Jack's opinion who is his student. Martin is a geneticist and a scientist in human physiology as well. In his past he came with two older sisters from Hungary to America a long time ago. He fell in a deep and all-consuming kind of love with a young girl called Mary Alice at the age of forty. By then the biologist had only two passions - his study and his love, his sisters were jealous and hated the girl. Martin was planning every day of the future together with Mary, he was building a house and approaching the time of marriage. A terrible accident happened in 1933 when he was returning from a work trip, Mary and the sisters were waiting for his train to arrive and Mary's horse rushed to the railway before the train. Mary died and Martin kneeled down before the shattered body on the track. "
] |
50905
|
Yesterday House
By FRITZ LEIBER
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction August 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Meeting someone who's been dead for twenty years is shocking enough for anyone with a belief in ghosts—worse for one with none!
I
The narrow cove was quiet as the face of an expectant child, yet so near the ruffled Atlantic that the last push of wind carried the Annie O. its full length. The man in gray flannels and sweatshirt let the sail come crumpling down and hurried past its white folds at a gait made comically awkward by his cramped muscles. Slowly the rocky ledge came nearer. Slowly the blue V inscribed on the cove's surface by the sloop's prow died. Sloop and ledge kissed so gently that he hardly had to reach out his hand.
He scrambled ashore, dipping a sneaker in the icy water, and threw the line around a boulder. Unkinking himself, he looked back through the cove's high and rocky mouth at the gray-green scattering of islands and the faint dark line that was the coast of Maine. He almost laughed in satisfaction at having disregarded vague warnings and done the thing every man yearns to do once in his lifetime—gone to the farthest island out.
He must have looked longer than he realized, because by the time he dropped his gaze the cove was again as glassy as if the Annie O. had always been there. And the splotches made by his sneaker on the rock had faded in the hot sun. There was something very unusual about the quietness of this place. As if time, elsewhere hurrying frantically, paused here to rest. As if all changes were erased on this one bit of Earth.
The man's lean, melancholy face crinkled into a grin at the banal fancy. He turned his back on his new friend, the little green sloop, without one thought for his nets and specimen bottles, and set out to explore. The ground rose steeply at first and the oaks were close, but after a little way things went downhill and the leaves thinned and he came out on more rocks—and realized that he hadn't quite gone to the farthest one out.
Joined to this island by a rocky spine, which at the present low tide would have been dry but for the spray, was another green, high island that the first had masked from him all the while he had been sailing. He felt a thrill of discovery, just as he'd wondered back in the woods whether his might not be the first human feet to kick through the underbrush. After all, there were thousands of these islands.
Then he was dropping down the rocks, his lanky limbs now moving smoothly enough.
To the landward side of the spine, the water was fairly still. It even began with another deep cove, in which he glimpsed the spiny spheres of sea urchins. But from seaward the waves chopped in, sprinkling his trousers to the knees and making him wince pleasurably at the thought of what vast wings of spray and towers of solid water must crash up from here in a storm.
He crossed the rocks at a trot, ran up a short grassy slope, raced through a fringe of trees—and came straight up against an eight-foot fence of heavy mesh topped with barbed wire and backed at a short distance with high, heavy shrubbery.
Without pausing for surprise—in fact, in his holiday mood, using surprise as a goad—he jumped for the branch of an oak whose trunk touched the fence, scorning the easier lower branch on the other side of the tree. Then he drew himself up, worked his way to some higher branches that crossed the fence, and dropped down inside.
Suddenly cautious, he gently parted the shrubbery and, before the first surprise could really sink in, had another.
A closely mown lawn dotted with more shrubbery ran up to a snug white Cape Cod cottage. The single strand of a radio aerial stretched the length of the roof. Parked on a neat gravel driveway that crossed just in front of the cottage was a short, square-lined touring car that he recognized from remembered pictures as an ancient Essex. The whole scene had about it the same odd quietness as the cove.
Then, with the air of a clock-work toy coming to life, the white door opened and an elderly woman came out, dressed in a long, lace-edged dress and wide, lacy hat. She climbed into the driver's seat of the Essex, sitting there very stiff and tall. The motor began to chug bravely, gravel skittered, and the car rolled off between the trees.
The door of the house opened again and a slim girl emerged. She wore a white silk dress that fell straight from square neck-line to hip-height waistline, making the skirt seem very short. Her dark hair was bound with a white bandeau so that it curved close to her cheeks. A dark necklace dangled against the white of the dress. A newspaper was tucked under her arm.
She crossed the driveway and tossed the paper down on a rattan table between three rattan chairs and stood watching a squirrel zigzag across the lawn.
The man stepped through the wall of shrubbery, called, "hello!" and walked toward her.
She whirled around and stared at him as still as if her heart had stopped beating. Then she darted behind the table and waited for him there. Granting the surprise of his appearance, her alarm seemed not so much excessive as eerie. As if, the man thought, he were not an ordinary stranger, but a visitor from another planet.
Approaching closer, he saw that she was trembling and that her breath was coming in rapid, irregular gasps. Yet the slim, sweet, patrician face that stared into his had an underlying expression of expectancy that reminded him of the cove. She couldn't have been more than eighteen.
He stopped short of the table. Before he could speak, she stammered out, "Are you he?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, smiling puzzledly.
"The one who sends me the little boxes."
"I was out sailing and I happened to land in the far cove. I didn't dream that anyone lived on this island, or even came here."
"No one ever does come here," she replied. Her manner had changed, becoming at once more wary and less agitated, though still eerily curious.
"It startled me tremendously to find this place," he blundered on.
"Especially the road and the car. Why, this island can't be more than a quarter of a mile wide."
"The road goes down to the wharf," she explained, "and up to the top of the island, where my aunts have a tree-house."
He tore his mind away from the picture of a woman dressed like Queen Mary clambering up a tree. "Was that your aunt I saw driving off?"
"One of them. The other's taken the motorboat in for supplies." She looked at him doubtfully. "I'm not sure they'll like it if they find someone here."
"There are just the three of you?" he cut in quickly, looking down the empty road that vanished among the oaks.
She nodded.
"I suppose you go in to the mainland with your aunts quite often?"
She shook her head.
"It must get pretty dull for you."
"Not very," she said, smiling. "My aunts bring me the papers and other things. Even movies. We've got a projector. My favorite stars are Antonio Morino and Alice Terry. I like her better even than Clara Bow."
He looked at her hard for a moment. "I suppose you read a lot?"
She nodded. "Fitzgerald's my favorite author." She started around the table, hesitated, suddenly grew shy. "Would you like some lemonade?"
He'd noticed the dewed silver pitcher, but only now realized his thirst. Yet when she handed him a glass, he held it untasted and said awkwardly, "I haven't introduced myself. I'm Jack Barry."
She stared at his outstretched right hand, slowly extended her own toward it, shook it up and down exactly once, then quickly dropped it.
He chuckled and gulped some lemonade. "I'm a biology student. Been working at Wood's Hole the first part of the summer. But now I'm here to do research in marine ecology—that's sort of sea-life patterns—of the in-shore islands. Under the direction of Professor Kesserich. You know about him, of course?"
She shook her head.
"Probably the greatest living biologist," he was proud to inform her. "Human physiology as well. Tremendous geneticist. In a class with Carlson and Jacques Loeb. Martin Kesserich—he lives over there at town. I'm staying with him. You ought to have heard of him." He grinned. "Matter of fact, I'd never have met you if it hadn't been for Mrs. Kesserich."
The girl looked puzzled.
Jack explained, "The old boy's been off to Europe on some conferences, won't be back for a couple days more. But I was to get started anyhow. When I went out this morning Mrs. Kesserich—she's a drab sort of person—said to me, 'Don't try to sail to the farther islands.' So, of course, I had to. By the way, you still haven't told me your name."
"Mary Alice Pope," she said, speaking slowly and with an odd wonder, as if she were saying it for the first time.
"You're pretty shy, aren't you?"
"How would I know?"
The question stopped Jack. He couldn't think of anything to say to this strangely attractive girl dressed almost like a "flapper."
"Will you sit down?" she asked him gravely.
The rattan chair sighed under his weight. He made another effort to talk. "I'll bet you'll be glad when summer's over."
"Why?"
"So you'll be able to go back to the mainland."
"But I never go to the mainland."
"You mean you stay out here all winter?" he asked incredulously, his mind filled with a vision of snow and frozen spray and great gray waves.
"Oh, yes. We get all our supplies on hand before winter. My aunts are very capable. They don't always wear long lace dresses. And now I help them."
"But that's impossible!" he said with sudden sympathetic anger. "You can't be shut off this way from people your own age!"
"You're the first one I ever met." She hesitated. "I never saw a boy or a man before, except in movies."
"You're joking!"
"No, it's true."
"But why are they doing it to you?" he demanded, leaning forward. "Why are they inflicting this loneliness on you, Mary?"
She seemed to have gained poise from his loss of it. "I don't know why. I'm to find out soon. But actually I'm not lonely. May I tell you a secret?" She touched his hand, this time with only the faintest trembling. "Every night the loneliness gathers in around me—you're right about that. But then every morning new life comes to me in a little box."
"What's that?" he said sharply.
"Sometimes there's a poem in the box, sometimes a book, or pictures, or flowers, or a ring, but always a note. Next to the notes I like the poems best. My favorite is the one by Matthew Arnold that ends,
'Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude—'"
"Wait a minute," he interrupted. "Who sends you these boxes?"
"I don't know."
"But how are the notes signed?"
"They're wonderful notes," she said. "So wise, so gay, so tender, you'd imagine them being written by John Barrymore or Lindbergh."
"Yes, but how are they signed?"
She hesitated. "Never anything but 'Your Lover.'"
"And so when you first saw me, you thought—" He began, then stopped because she was blushing.
"How long have you been getting them?"
"Ever since I can remember. I have two closets of the boxes. The new ones are either by my bed when I wake or at my place at breakfast."
"But how does this—person get these boxes to you out here? Does he give them to your aunts and do they put them there?"
"I'm not sure."
"But how can they get them in winter?"
"I don't know."
"Look here," he said, pouring himself more lemonade, "how long is it since you've been to the mainland?"
"Almost eighteen years. My aunts tell me I was born there in the middle of the war."
"What war?" he asked startledly, spilling some lemonade.
"The World War, of course. What's the matter?"
Jack Barr was staring down at the spilled lemonade and feeling a kind of terror he'd never experienced in his waking life. Nothing around him had changed. He could still feel the same hot sun on his shoulders, the same icy glass in his hand, scent the same lemon-acid odor in his nostrils. He could still hear the faint chop-chop of the waves.
And yet everything had changed, gone dark and dizzy as a landscape glimpsed just before a faint. All the little false notes had come to a sudden focus. For the lemonade had spilled on the headline of the newspaper the girl had tossed down, and the headline read:
HITLER IN NEW DEFIANCE
Under the big black banner of that head swam smaller ones:
Foes of Machado Riot in Havana
Big NRA Parade Planned
Balbo Speaks in New York
Suddenly he felt a surge of relief. He had noticed that the paper was yellow and brittle-edged.
"Why are you so interested in old newspapers?" he asked.
"I wouldn't call day-before-yesterday's paper old," the girl objected, pointing at the dateline: July 20, 1933.
"You're trying to joke," Jack told her.
"No, I'm not."
"But it's 1953."
"Now it's you who are joking."
"But the paper's yellow."
"The paper's always yellow."
He laughed uneasily. "Well, if you actually think it's 1933, perhaps you're to be envied," he said, with a sardonic humor he didn't quite feel. "Then you can't know anything about the Second World War, or television, or the V-2s, or Bikini bathing suits, or the atomic bomb, or—"
"Stop!" She had sprung up and retreated around her chair, white-faced.
"I don't like what you're saying."
"But—"
"No, please! Jokes that may be quite harmless on the mainland sound different here."
"I'm really not joking," he said after a moment.
She grew quite frantic at that. "I can show you all last week's papers! I can show you magazines and other things. I can prove it!"
She started toward the house. He followed. He felt his heart begin to pound.
At the white door she paused, looking worriedly down the road. Jack thought he could hear the faint chug of a motorboat. She pushed open the door and he followed her inside. The small-windowed room was dark after the sunlight. Jack got an impression of solid old furniture, a fireplace with brass andirons.
"Flash!" croaked a gritty voice. "After their disastrous break day before yesterday, stocks are recovering. Leading issues...."
Jack realized that he had started and had involuntarily put his arm around the girl's shoulders. At the same time he noticed that the voice was coming from the curved brown trumpet of an old-fashioned radio loudspeaker.
The girl didn't pull away from him. He turned toward her. Although her gray eyes were on him, her attention had gone elsewhere.
"I can hear the car. They're coming back. They won't like it that you're here."
"All right they won't like it."
Her agitation grew. "No, you must go."
"I'll come back tomorrow," he heard himself saying.
"Flash! It looks as if the World Economic Conference may soon adjourn, mouthing jeers at old Uncle Sam who is generally referred to as Uncle Shylock."
Jack felt a numbness on his neck. The room seemed to be darkening, the girl growing stranger still.
"You must go before they see you."
"Flash! Wiley Post has just completed his solo circuit of the Globe, after a record-breaking flight of 7 days, 18 hours and 45 minutes. Asked how he felt after the energy-draining feat, Post quipped...."
He was halfway across the lawn before he realized the terror into which the grating radio voice had thrown him.
He leaped for the branch over-hanging the fence, vaulted up with the risky help of a foot on the barbed top. A surprised squirrel, lacking time to make its escape up the trunk, sprang to the ground ahead of him. With terrible suddenness, two steel-jawed semicircles clanked together just over the squirrel's head. Jack landed with one foot to either side of the sprung trap, while the squirrel darted off with a squeak.
Jack plunged down the slope to the rocky spine and ran across it, spray from the rising waves spattering him to the waist. Panting now, he stumbled up into the oaks and undergrowth of the first island, fought his way through it, finally reached the silent cove. He loosed the line of the Annie O. , dragged it as near to the cove's mouth as he could, plunged knee-deep in freezing water to give it a final shove, scrambled aboard, snatched up the boathook and punched at the rocks.
As soon as the Annie O. was nosing out of the cove into the cross waves, he yanked up the sail. The freshening wind filled it and sent the sloop heeling over, with inches of white water over the lee rail, and plunging ahead.
For a long while, Jack was satisfied to think of nothing but the wind and the waves and the sail and speed and danger, to have all his attention taken up balancing one against the other, so that he wouldn't have to ask himself what year it was and whether time was an illusion, and wonder about flappers and hidden traps.
When he finally looked back at the island, he was amazed to see how tiny it had grown, as distant as the mainland.
Then he saw a gray motorboat astern. He watched it as it slowly overtook him. It was built like a lifeboat, with a sturdy low cabin in the bow and wheel amidship. Whoever was at the wheel had long gray hair that whipped in the wind. The longer he looked, the surer he was that it was a woman wearing a lace dress. Something that stuck up inches over the cabin flashed darkly beside her. Only when she lifted it to the roof of the cabin did it occur to him that it might be a rifle.
But just then the motorboat swung around in a turn that sent waves drenching over it, and headed back toward the island. He watched it for a minute in wonder, then his attention was jolted by an angry hail.
Three fishing smacks, also headed toward town, were about to cross his bow. He came around into the wind and waited with shaking sail, watching a man in a lumpy sweater shake a fist at him. Then he turned and gratefully followed the dark, wide, fanlike sterns and age-yellowed sails.
II
The exterior of Martin Kesserich's home—a weathered white cube with narrow, sharp-paned windows, topped by a cupola—was nothing like its lavish interior.
In much the same way, Mrs. Kesserich clashed with the darkly gleaming furniture, persian rugs and bronze vases around her. Her shapeless black form, poised awkwardly on the edge of a huge sofa, made Jack think of a cow that had strayed into the drawing room. He wondered again how a man like Kesserich had come to marry such a creature.
Yet when she lifted up her little eyes from the shadows, he had the uneasy feeling that she knew a great deal about him. The eyes were still those of a domestic animal, but of a wise one that has been watching the house a long, long while from the barnyard.
He asked abruptly, "Do you know anything of a girl around here named Mary Alice Pope?"
The silence lasted so long that he began to think she'd gone into some bovine trance. Then, without a word, she got up and went over to a tall cabinet. Feeling on a ledge behind it for a key, she opened a panel, opened a cardboard box inside it, took something from the box and handed him a photograph. He held it up to the failing light and sucked in his breath with surprise.
It was a picture of the girl he'd met that afternoon. Same flat-bosomed dress—flowered rather than white—no bandeau, same beads. Same proud, demure expression, perhaps a bit happier.
"That is Mary Alice Pope," Mrs. Kesserich said in a strangely flat voice. "She was Martin's fiancee. She was killed in a railway accident in 1933."
The small sound of the cabinet door closing brought Jack back to reality. He realized that he no longer had the photograph. Against the gloom by the cabinet, Mrs. Kesserich's white face looked at him with what seemed a malicious eagerness.
"Sit down," she said, "and I'll tell you about it."
Without a thought as to why she hadn't asked him a single question—he was much too dazed for that—he obeyed. Mrs. Kesserich resumed her position on the edge of the sofa.
"You must understand, Mr. Barr, that Mary Alice Pope was the one love of Martin's life. He is a man of very deep and strong feelings, yet as you probably know, anything but kindly or demonstrative. Even when he first came here from Hungary with his older sisters Hani and Hilda, there was a cloak of loneliness about him—or rather about the three of them.
"Hani and Hilda were athletic outdoor women, yet fiercely proud—I don't imagine they ever spoke to anyone in America except as to a servant—and with a seething distaste for all men except Martin. They showered all their devotion on him. So of course, though Martin didn't realize it, they were consumed with jealousy when he fell in love with Mary Alice Pope. They'd thought that since he'd reached forty without marrying, he was safe.
"Mary Alice came from a pure-bred, or as a biologist would say, inbred British stock. She was very young, but very sweet, and up to a point very wise. She sensed Hani and Hilda's feelings right away and did everything she could to win them over. For instance, though she was afraid of horses, she took up horseback riding, because that was Hani and Hilda's favorite pastime. Naturally, Martin knew nothing of her fear, and naturally his sisters knew about it from the first. But—and here is where Mary's wisdom fell short—her brave gesture did not pacify them: it only increased their hatred.
"Except for his research, Martin was blind to everything but his love. It was a beautiful and yet frightening passion, an insane cherishing as narrow and intense as his sisters hatred."
With a start, Jack remembered that it was Mrs. Kesserich telling him all this.
She went on, "Martin's love directed his every move. He was building a home for himself and Mary, and in his mind he was building a wonderful future for them as well—not vaguely, if you know Martin, but year by year, month by month. This winter, he'd plan, they would visit Buenos Aires, next summer they would sail down the inland passage and he would teach Mary Hungarian for their trip to Buda-Pesth the year after, where he would occupy a chair at the university for a few months ... and so on. Finally the time for their marriage drew near. Martin had been away. His research was keeping him very busy—"
Jack broke in with, "Wasn't that about the time he did his definitive work on growth and fertilization?"
Mrs. Kesserich nodded with solemn appreciation in the gathering darkness. "But now he was coming home, his work done. It was early evening, very chilly, but Hani and Hilda felt they had to ride down to the station to meet their brother. And although she dreaded it, Mary rode with them, for she knew how delighted he would be at her cantering to the puffing train and his running up to lift her down from the saddle to welcome him home.
"Of course there was Martin's luggage to be considered, so the station wagon had to be sent down for that." She looked defiantly at Jack. "I drove the station wagon. I was Martin's laboratory assistant."
She paused. "It was almost dark, but there was still a white cold line of sky to the west. Hani and Hilda, with Mary between them, were waiting on their horses at the top of the hill that led down to the station. The train had whistled and its headlight was graying the gravel of the crossing.
"Suddenly Mary's horse squealed and plunged down the hill. Hani and Hilda followed—to try to catch her, they said, but they didn't manage that, only kept her horse from veering off. Mary never screamed, but as her horse reared on the tracks, I saw her face in the headlight's glare.
"Martin must have guessed, or at least feared what had happened, for he was out of the train and running along the track before it stopped. In fact, he was the first to kneel down beside Mary—I mean, what had been Mary—and was holding her all bloody and shattered in his arms."
A door slammed. There were steps in the hall. Mrs. Kesserich stiffened and was silent. Jack turned.
The blur of a face hung in the doorway to the hall—a seemingly young, sensitive, suavely handsome face with aristocratic jaw. Then there was a click and the lights flared up and Jack saw the close-cropped gray hair and the lines around the eyes and nostrils, while the sensitive mouth grew sardonic. Yet the handsomeness stayed, and somehow the youth, too, or at least a tremendous inner vibrancy.
"Hello, Barr," Martin Kesserich said, ignoring his wife.
The great biologist had come home.
III
"Oh, yes, and Jamieson had a feeble paper on what he called individualization in marine worms. Barr, have you ever thought much about the larger aspects of the problem of individuality?"
Jack jumped slightly. He had let his thoughts wander very far.
"Not especially, sir," he mumbled.
The house was still. A few minutes after the professor's arrival, Mrs. Kesserich had gone off with an anxious glance at Jack. He knew why and wished he could reassure her that he would not mention their conversation to the professor.
Kesserich had spent perhaps a half hour briefing him on the more important papers delivered at the conferences. Then, almost as if it were a teacher's trick to show up a pupil's inattention, he had suddenly posed this question about individuality.
"You know what I mean, of course," Kesserich pressed. "The factors that make you you, and me me."
"Heredity and environment," Jack parroted like a freshman.
Kesserich nodded. "Suppose—this is just speculation—that we could control heredity and environment. Then we could re-create the same individual at will."
Jack felt a shiver go through him. "To get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits. That'd be far beyond us."
"What about identical twins?" Kesserich pointed out. "And then there's parthenogenesis to be considered. One might produce a duplicate of the mother without the intervention of the male." Although his voice had grown more idly speculative, Kesserich seemed to Jack to be smiling secretly. "There are many examples in the lower animal forms, to say nothing of the technique by which Loeb caused a sea urchin to reproduce with no more stimulus than a salt solution."
Jack felt the hair rising on his neck. "Even then you wouldn't get exactly the same pattern of hereditary traits."
"Not if the parent were of very pure stock? Not if there were some special technique for selecting ova that would reproduce all the mother's traits?"
"But environment would change things," Jack objected. "The duplicate would be bound to develop differently."
"Is environment so important? Newman tells about a pair of identical twins separated from birth, unaware of each other's existence. They met by accident when they were twenty-one. Each was a telephone repairman. Each had a wife the same age. Each had a baby son. And each had a fox terrier called 'Trixie.' That's without trying to make environments similar. But suppose you did try. Suppose you saw to it that each of them had exactly the same experiences at the same times...."
For a moment it seemed to Jack that the room was dimming and wavering, becoming a dark pool in which the only motionless thing was Kesserich's sphinx-like face.
"Well, we've escaped quite far enough from Jamieson's marine worms," the biologist said, all brisk again. He said it as if Jack were the one who had led the conversation down wild and unprofitable channels.
"Let's get on to your project. I want to talk it over now, because I won't have any time for it tomorrow."
Jack looked at him blankly.
"Tomorrow I must attend to a very important matter," the biologist explained.
IV
Morning sunlight brightened the colors of the wax flowers under glass on the high bureau that always seemed to emit the faint odor of old hair combings. Jack pulled back the diamond-patterned quilt and blinked the sleep from his eyes. He expected his mind to be busy wondering about Kesserich and his wife—things said and half said last night—but found instead that his thoughts swung instantly to Mary Alice Pope, as if to a farthest island in a world of people.
Downstairs, the house was empty. After a long look at the cabinet—he felt behind it, but the key was gone—he hurried down to the waterfront. He stopped only for a bowl of chowder and, as an afterthought, to buy half a dozen newspapers.
The sea was bright, the brisk wind just right for the Annie O. There was eagerness in the way it smacked the sail and in the creak of the mast. And when he reached the cove, it was no longer still, but nervous with faint ripples, as if time had finally begun to stir.
After the same struggle with the underbrush, he came out on the rocky spine and passed the cove of the sea urchins. The spiny creatures struck an uncomfortable chord in his memory.
This time he climbed the second island cautiously, scraping the innocent-seeming ground ahead of him intently with a boathook he'd brought along for the purpose. He was only a few yards from the fence when he saw Mary Alice Pope standing behind it.
He hadn't realized that his heart would begin to pound or that, at the same time, a shiver of almost supernatural dread would go through him.
The girl eyed him with an uneasy hostility and immediately began to speak in a hushed, hurried voice. "You must go away at once and never come back. You're a wicked man, but I don't want you to be hurt. I've been watching for you all morning."
He tossed the newspapers over the fence. "You don't have to read them now," he told her. "Just look at the datelines and a few of the headlines."
When she finally lifted her eyes to his again, she was trembling. She tried unsuccessfully to speak.
"Listen to me," he said. "You've been the victim of a scheme to make you believe you were born around 1916 instead of 1933, and that it's
1933 now instead of 1951. I'm not sure why it's been done, though I think I know who you really are."
"But," the girl faltered, "my aunts tell me it's 1933."
"They would."
"And there are the papers ... the magazines ... the radio."
"The papers are old ones. The radio's faked—some sort of recording. I could show you if I could get at it."
" These papers might be faked," she said, pointing to where she'd let them drop on the ground.
"They're new," he said. "Only old papers get yellow."
"But why would they do it to me? Why? "
"Come with me to the mainland, Mary. That'll set you straight quicker than anything."
"I couldn't," she said, drawing back. "He's coming tonight."
"He?"
"The man who sends me the boxes ... and my life."
Jack shivered. When he spoke, his voice was rough and quick. "A life that's completely a lie, that's cut you off from the world. Come with me, Mary."
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What kinds of rules were introduced to the United Universe by different planets and for what reasons?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Tea Tray in the Sky by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
Question:
What kinds of rules were introduced to the United Universe by different planets and for what reasons?
Answer:
|
[
"The United Universe's laws are a combination of laws of every planet involved. Earth has introduced the tabu regarding offending motherhood as it is sacred. Electra has prohibited appearing in public bare handed, because its people have eight fingers on each hand and feel different from others. Yellow is forbidden to wear as it represents death on Saturn. Zosma has just joined the United Universe and introduced the necessity to cover the heads in public, which is immodest on that planet. Theemimians do not eat in public, and so do all other beings in the United Universe. Fomalhautians do not have feet and, therefore, do not walk. So, it's prohibited to walk more than two hundred yards. Zaniahansn are like bees and go everywhere with their families, therefore, one can not travel alone in the universe. Nekkarians say and imply only what is true. Meropians do not have history and this word is offending for them, and forbidden, therefore. On Talitha marriage is slavery, and so is it on other planets. ",
"There are many rules introduced to the United Universe by different planets that affect what citizens can wear, say, or even do with their lives. One of the rules introduced by the United Universe is an Earth tabu. The story says that Motherhood is sacred on Earth and the entire universe, so talking about anything that contradicts it is the same as violating the law. Another rule is that one must not violate the spirit of free enterprise and cause ego injury. This rule allows advertisers to continue creating their constant advideos. In terms of what one can wear, it is illegal on Electra to appear in public with bare hands and immodest to appear without a head covering on Zosma. Even talking about eating is considered vulgar to Theemimian, while the disgusting aroma of the Algedian cab is a scent that must be enjoyed. Meropians are also extremely sensitive to word history, making it illegal to say around them. On Earth, it is also considered unthinkable to go anywhere without a family because of the Zaniahans. Despite needing a family, marriage is illegal because it is considered slavery on Talitha. These rules are all introduced and accepted as a means of keeping the universe together. The Wise Ones believe that keeping every custom, rule, and habit the same will foster universal peace. ",
"It is considered a crime to injure another through word or action, thus customs and laws of each planet are considered laws of all other planets. Firstly, courteous is an important rule of the United Universe. Secondly, motherhood is sacred on Earth, thus it was introduced to the United Universe and all planets have to consider it sacred. Moreover, the advideos cannot be turned off since it would hurt the spirit of free enterprise; hands are forbidden to be bare in public since Electrans have eight fingers on each hand and two nails on each finger, which are covered in green scales; and yellow cannot be wore since it is the color of death on Saturn. On the jet bus, they are told that Zosma has been just admitted to the Union and the people there do not appear with bare head in public, thus from now on, everyone has to wear some sort of headgear in public. Furthermore, Theemimians are afraid of vulgar, thus any vulgar words such as eating cannot be stated in public; Fomalhautians do not walk, thus it is forbidden for everyone in the Union to walk more than two hundred yards in one direction. Ego injury is also considered a crime. Surprisingly, the word “hotel” cannot be mentioned since it means a place of dancing girls in the current society; “lodging” is offensive to the Zaniahans since they almost always travel with a family; “married” was outlawed years ago because Talithas consider the exclusive possession of a opposite sex as slavery; “history” pisses the Meropians off since they do not have any history, they went from barbaric to civilized in one generation, and historical buildings such as the Empire State was considered useless. Finally, Times Square is actually a square because the Nekkars do not allow anything that is not true to exist; and it is illegal to interrupt someone when they are speaking. ",
"There were many rules introduced by the united universe for various reasons. It is forbidden to appear in public with your hands held by Electra because they have eight fingers, two of them being very ugly. You aren't allowed to wear yellow on Saturn, as it is the color of death. On Zosma it is illegal to appear with you head bare. On Them It is vulgar to speak about eating in public. The Fomalhaut Incas have made it illegal to walk more than two hundred feet in any direction. Because of the Zaniahan's it is forbidden to stay anywhere without one's family. On Nekkar, it is illegal to do, say or imply anything that isn;t true. The word history is not allowed because the Meropians deem it to be insulting. MArriage in earth was outlawed. \n"
] |
50847
|
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
|
What is the relationship between Michael and Mr. Carpenter?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Tea Tray in the Sky by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
Question:
What is the relationship between Michael and Mr. Carpenter?
Answer:
|
[
"Mr. Carpenter is the first acquaintance Michael makes on his trip into the world. They are companions on the bus to Portyork. At first, Michael is unwilling to talk and Carpenter is curious to know about the reasons for the former to join a Brotherhood. Soon, Carpenter realizes that Michael is unfamiliar with the ways of this world and decides to take charge and show the youth around. Carpenter forgives Michael's every mistake and explains it, warning the youth to become silent in case of danger. Carpenter is more forgiving and kind than many other citizens, which is the reason for him taking charge of Michael. The man shows the newcomer around the city and prevents him from getting in trouble. Carpenter even defends Michael before an offended Meropian, who wants to report to the police. Things change when Michael begins an argument with Carpenter regarding marriage, which has been outlawed. Michael's desire to possess his girl alone contradicts the norms of the world and the youth's obstinance in this desire shock Carpenter completely. When he learns that in the Brotherhood both sexes are represented and marriage, which equals slavery to him, exists, Carpenter becomes sure that Michael can't adapt to the civilized world. After that, each goes his way.\n",
"Michael and Mr. Carpenter are travel companions for the duration of his stay in Portyork. Mr. Carpenter first befriends Michael on the jet bus, and he decides to take the latter around after seeing that Michael does not know his way around Earth. He is quick to inform Michael of the rules of the United Universe and always corrects him immediately whenever there is a problem. Mr. Carpenter is very knowledgeable about Portyork, the rules of the United Universe, and even the extraterrestrials. Although he does get fearful of Michael’s illegal outbursts, he is kind enough not to report him to the police and teach him instead. While Mr. Carpenter concludes that Michael is unsuited for life on Earth and the United Universe, there is no bad blood between them, and Michael learns a lot from him. \n",
"Michael first met Mr. Carpenter on the jet bus heading towards Portyork. Carpenter notices that Michael comes from the Brotherhood and assumed that he was there because of trouble over women. Then Michael reveals that he has been in the Brotherhood for almost his whole life. After being reminded of a few tabus and customs that Michael is not even aware off, Carpenter asks Michael to stick around him for a while since he is unfamiliar with the civilized behaviors and can easily get in trouble. After exiting the jet bus, Carpenter mentions to Michael that he does not have anything to do this moment, thus he can show him around. Carpenter helps Michael to find the position of a “Feeding Station” so that he can get some food. Afterwards, Michael attempts to break more customs when trying to get to the Old Town. However, they were all stopped by Carpenter before anyone notices it. However, getting off the taxi, a being notices Carpenter stating the word “history” and threatens to report him to the police because history is something that the Meropians lack. Carpenter begs the being and blames himself for not warning Michael. Later, Michael interrupts Carpenter, asking for the lavatory. Thus, they get to the Empire State Building, which has been transformed into a lavatory, since, apparently, it has no other use. On their way out, Carpenter is shocked at Michael desiring for a permanent family, since there’s no marriage in the Union, and family is never permanent. Carpenter is very openminded, and agrees that there are individuals that do not apapt themselves to the civilization, the Brotherhood is a much better option for them. Later, Michael heads home to his Brotherhood. ",
"Mr.Carpenter acts as a kind of companion and advisor to Micheal. They first meet on the space bus on the way to Port York. Carpenter notices that Micheal is hopelessly lost in the social intricacies of the United Universe. Carpenter decides to take Micheal under his wing to make sure that he doesn't get in any trouble with the law as he tries to maneuver his way through this new society. They exit the bus together and make their way to a nourishing station, and then into the old town, where Carpenter points out various landmarks to Micheal. Carpenter keeps having to correct Micheal on his language, and eventually has to defend and apologize for him when he offends a Meropian. Carpenter often is shocked by Micheal's language and thoughts, but chalks it up to him not being experienced. Carpenter eventually agrees that it's better for Micheal to go home to the Brotherhood. They part amicably. "
] |
50847
|
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
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What is the setting of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Tea Tray in the Sky by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
Question:
What is the setting of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The narration begins on a bus shelf where the main character lies. Then he arrives at Portyork, a huge spaceport on Earth, where Michael and Mr. Carpenter head to the nearest feeding station following the map. There Michael alone is admitted into a tiny room to eat. When he finishes, the two take a trip to the Old Town by taxi. In the cab they crossed Portyork, looking at the cosmopolitan architecture and people. They exit the taxi at Times Square which is indeed in the shape of a square and is decorated for the New Year in green and red though it's July. The two walk a little to Broadway and then. take another can to a public lavatory. There, in the elevator, Michael sees many foreigners again. When they leave the lavatory, the two have an argument and go different ways. In the next scene Michaels appears on a shelf on his way back to Angeles, to the Lodge and the Brotherhood. Upon arrival, he takes the same taxi back home. \n",
"The story is set on Earth. Michael and Carpenter initially travel to Portyork via a jet bus. There is a level on the bus that drops his pack from the storage compartment. There are also no seats on the jet bus to accommodate the numerous types of life forms. Portyork is a cosmopolitan city filled with many different forms of architecture. There are silver dome buildings belonging to Earth origins and tall, helical Venusian buildings. Many different extraterrestrials inhabit the city too. The feeding station room Carpenter brings Michael has a slot for a two-credit piece. The tiny room itself has only a chair, table, food compartment, and advideo. Times Square is a square meadow with transparent domes, housing many antique clocks that run by twenty-four hours instead of the standard thirty. There are also many green and red decorations put out to prepare for Christmas. Broadway has boogil trees from Dschubba, and the Empire State Building still looks the same as in the pictures, except there is a huge “Public Washport” sign. There is a circular desk to direct traffic from and many different floors for each extraterrestrial species. ",
"The story takes place when Christmas is almost here, it’s July. It begins with the jet bus heading towards Portyork. The jet bus don’t have any seats since it was proven to be the most suitable way for different life-forms. The bus has an illuminated panel on a shelf, where Michael and Carpenter lie; and there is a storage compartment on the bus, and it can drop the bags that is stored within it using a lever. \n\nThe landing field has a large map that shows the location of the “Feeding Station” to Carpenter. Walking into the small and austere room that has a sliding door at the station, Michael sees that there is only a table, a chair, a food compartment and an advideo, and nothing else. \nPortyork is the largest spaceport in the United Universe and the city with the most cosmopolitan architectures and diverse group of inhabitants. Eventually, Michael gets a better view of the city of Portyork on the taxi, after he gets used to the Tpiu Number Five aroma. He sees the Silver domes of Earth as well as the tall helical buildings of the Venusians, standing right next to the domes. There are houses in Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones style due to the medieval architecture revival that is taking place there. Michael also notes the streamers and red and green balls on the street, which are lit even when there’s daylight. Getting off of the taxi, Michael and Carpenter arrive at the Time Square, which is actually a square now. It is filled with clocks inside transparent plastic domes, where most of those clocks are 24-hr clock; a few have 30-hr, which is the standard nowadays. Broadway is filled with shades from the boogil trees. The Empire State Building looks just like the pictures in his history book, but a “Public-Washport” sign was there. There is a large circular desk in the lobby, where the attendants directed the guests to the elevators. ",
"The setting of the story is earth. When we first meet Micheal, he is on a bus, travelling to Portyork. It is a city that has clearly evolved from New York. The bus is uncomfortable to Micheal, as everyone on it has to lie down. The bus finally stops on the landing field. They depart from the bus into the outer edges of the city. Micheal goes into a small, white plain building which is marked as a feeding station to nourish himself. In the building is a table and chair, a food compartment and an advideo. The heart of the city is described as \"Old Town\". Portyork is the biggest spaceport in the United Universe. There are silver domes of earth, clustered by towing edifices of the Venusians. There are red and green balls that glow, lighting the streets. There are long red and green streamers lining the streets. They are transported to a square meadow, with plastic domes containing different types of clocks dotted throughout. It is Times square. There is a lovely walkway that is lined by \"boogil trees\". It is broadway. The empire state building has been converted into a washing station and lavatory, with different floors for different species. "
] |
50847
|
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Tea Tray in the Sky by Evelyn E. Smith.
Relevant chunks:
Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"From his shelf Michael watches a juice advertisement. Then a nearby passenger starts a conversation regarding Michael's belonging to a Brotherhood. Michael remembers how the Father Superior proposed the idea for him to live in the outside world to answer the question about reasons for the Brotherhood's resignation from it. The young man makes one mistake after another, violating the laws of the Universe during the short conversation with his respectable companion. The least warns the youth against those mistakes and lets him stick close for a while, then the two listen to the Sirians singing. Suddenly, it turns out that Zosma has joined the United Universe and its rule to always cover the head becomes Universal starting that second. Upon the arrival to Portyork, Michael and his companion cautiously head to eat, and the man keeps enlightening the newcomer. Then they take a ride through the city with Carpenter constantly explaining Michael his new mistakes. During a short following walk, Michael says \"history\" and unintentionally deeply offends a man, who is urged by Carpenter not to report. Then Michael asks for a shower, and they take a taxi to a public lavatory. Advideos keep appearing and annoying the two everywhere. Then Carpenter wants to find a temporary family for Michael to make his stay legal, but the least mentions the desire to create his own permanent family and marry the girl he likes. This statement is the turning point, Carpenter is shocked with the youth's ignorance about marriage being outlawed. Michael in turn is frustrated with the idea of having to share his girl and decides to return to the Brotherhood. Carpenter is even more shocked by the news of both sexes living there together and belonging to one another, so he considers Michael simply unfit for the civilized and comfortable life. Michael, on the contrary, already dreams of coming back home. He takes the same bus and then the same taxi to his Brotherhood. ",
"Michael Frey is a member of one of the Brotherhoods, and he leaves his home to explore the outside world. The stranger he talks to asks him why he would join one, and he explains that his father brought him to the Angeleno Brotherhood when he was an infant. The United Universe lives in peace and never engages in wars with one another because every citizen must adapt to the customs of another one. Michael questions Father Superior about the ways of the Brotherhood before coming, and the Father suggests him coming to experience the life of civilization. He meets Pierce B. Carpenter, who hands him a business card and explains that aphrodisiacs are his line of business. He and Michael begin discussing the rules by the United Universe, and Carpenter warns him of the various rules, such as appearing in public with bare hands and that he must be careful. Michael retrieves a pair of yellow gloves from his pack, but Carpenter tells him that wearing yellow is the color of death on Saturn. He settles for rose-colored gloves instead. Carpenter offers to guide him through his stay in Portyork so that Michael will not run into any problems with the law. A stewardess goes around and announces that everybody must now wear some form of head-wearing because of Zosma’s admittance into the Union. Carpenter tells Michael that the universe is constantly expanding, which means that there must be constant updates. He then takes Michael to a “Feeding Station” for some food and offers to take him to the Old Town after. Michael mentions wanting to go to a hotel, but Carpenter explains he should not say these words because of the laws. The two go to Times Square, where the aliens are currently preparing for Christmas. Carpenter continues his tour to a few more locations, such as the Empire State building and Broadway. After, Michael gets himself washed, and Carpenter tells him that they must register him for a family now. Michael mentions getting married to his girlfriend soon, to which Carpenter shockingly tells him not to use that word because it is banned on Earth. He explains that Michael would have to share his girlfriend if he chooses to bring her here. Michael declares that he wants to go back to the Brotherhood, and Carpenter agrees, telling him that he does not adapt well to civilized behavior. Michael goes back to the ancient taxi again, where the driver is not surprised to see him back. He gives one last insult to civilization, which the taxi driver warns him about, and feels content to go home. ",
"Michael Frey is a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood, a rural city in comparison to largest spaceport in the United Universe, Portyork. The United Universe consists of many different worlds and is expanding at all times. The story begins with Michael on a jet bus heading towards Portyork looking for a job. He imagines bringing his girl over to get married once he settles down.\n\nMichael was so eager to leave the Brotherhood and to go explore the world that after a year of learning the tabus and customs, he boards the bus heading to Portyork. On the jet bus, Michael meets Pierce B. Carpenter, a board-minded, middle-aged man with brown hair and blue eyes. Carpenter works in the aphrodisiacs industry, and his first thought Michael joined the Brotherhood because he was troubled over a female, then Michael reveals that he has been in the Brother since he was an infant. After accused of breaking a series of laws, which includes talking about fatherhood, wondering about turning the advideo off, not covering his hands, being intolerant, and having yellow colored gloves, Carpenter offers to guide Michael around the city so that he can learn about the civilized behaviors.\n\nPrior to landing, the stewardess announces that Zosma is now a part of the Union. Since they have a custom of not showing their head in public, everyone in the United Universe has to cover their head, thus, the passengers all leave the jet bus after wearing some sort of headgear. Then, Michael states loudly that he is hungry and need to find something to eat. He is immediately rebuked by Carpenter. Everyone in the Union is not allowed to speak of eating, or use any other vulgar language in public since it is a custom for the Theemimians. After checking the map of the landing field, Michael is able to get to a “Feeding Station,” where he chewed on pieces of food that were meant to be swallowed. Afterwards, Michael attempts to break more customs when trying to get to the Old Town. Getting off the taxi, Michael finally offends a being who threatens to report him to the police because he has mentioned the word “history,” something that the Meropians lack. Carpenter begs the being and blames himself for not warning Michael. Later, Michael interrupts Carpenter, asking for the lavatory. Thus, they get to the Empire State Building, which has been transformed into a lavatory, since, apparently, it has no other use. \n\nOn their way out, Michael mentions his desire for marriage and family with the girl he got. Carpenter is shocked since there’s no marriage in the Union, and family is never permanent. Thus, Michael is determined to leave. Finally, Michael is back to the Brotherhood. He tells the taxi driver about his dislike for civilization. The driver reminds him that civilization is spreading, even to rural areas. However, Michael is happy that he is heading home. ",
"While on his way to Earth from the \"Brotherhood\" Michael meets a salesman named Mr. Carpenter. Micheal is moving to Earth in search of a new life, after his father passed away. The Brotherhood is a community that focuses on living in the ways of the past, which would be the present now, in this future society. Micheal and Carpenter begin to chat, but Carpenter soon makes Micheal aware of the social intricacies at play in this new Terran society. Earth is part of what's known as the \"United Universe\" which is a leaf of planets that was created over five hundred years ago. Each planet has different rules and customs, and to avoid conflict in this league, each planet must abide by one another's customs to avoid the chance of war breaking out. A person not abiding by those rules would face charges. Carpenter notices that Micheal keeps breaking these societal rules on their journey, and offers to take him under his wing, and show him around Earth, so he can avoid running into trouble. They arrive in Portyork, noticing all the Aliens that depart from the bus. Carpenter takes Michel to show him around, Micheal repeatedly unintentionally breaking rules. Micheal strats to get frustrated with all of these rules, not understanding the reasons behind them. The final straw comes when Micheal mentions to Carpenter that he has a girl back in the brotherhood whom he intends to marry. Carpenter tells him that marriage was outlawed a long time ago. Micheal decides that life in this civilisation is not worth it. He returns to the brotherhood and to his girlfriend. "
] |
50847
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Tea Tray in the Sky
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by ASHMAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Visiting a society is tougher than being born into it. A 40 credit tour is no substitute!
The picture changed on the illuminated panel that filled the forward end of the shelf on which Michael lay. A haggard blonde woman sprawled apathetically in a chair.
"Rundown, nervous, hypertensive?" inquired a mellifluous voice. "In need of mental therapy? Buy Grugis juice; it's not expensive. And they swear by it on Meropé."
A disembodied pair of hands administered a spoonful of Grugis juice to the woman, whereupon her hair turned bright yellow, makeup bloomed on her face, her clothes grew briefer, and she burst into a fast Callistan clog.
"I see from your hair that you have been a member of one of the Brotherhoods," the passenger lying next to Michael on the shelf remarked inquisitively. He was a middle-aged man, his dust-brown hair thinning on top, his small blue eyes glittering preternaturally from the lenses fitted over his eyeballs.
Michael rubbed his fingers ruefully over the blond stubble on his scalp and wished he had waited until his tonsure were fully grown before he had ventured out into the world. But he had been so impatient to leave the Lodge, so impatient to exchange the flowing robes of the Brotherhood for the close-fitting breeches and tunic of the outer world that had seemed so glamorous and now proved so itchy.
"Yes," he replied courteously, for he knew the first rule of universal behavior, "I have been a Brother."
"Now why would a good-looking young fellow like you want to join a Brotherhood?" his shelf companion wanted to know. "Trouble over a female?"
Michael shook his head, smiling. "No, I have been a member of the Angeleno Brotherhood since I was an infant. My father brought me when he entered."
The other man clucked sympathetically. "No doubt he was grieved over the death of your mother."
Michael closed his eyes to shut out the sight of a baby protruding its fat face at him three-dimensionally, but he could not shut out its lisping voice: "Does your child refuse its food, grow wizened like a monkey? It will grow plump with oh-so-good Mealy Mush from Nunki."
"No, sir," Michael replied. "Father said that was one of the few blessings that brightened an otherwise benighted life."
Horror contorted his fellow traveller's plump features. "Be careful, young man!" he warned. "Lucky for you that you are talking to someone as broad-minded as I, but others aren't. You might be reported for violating a tabu. An Earth tabu, moreover."
"An Earth tabu?"
"Certainly. Motherhood is sacred here on Earth and so, of course, in the entire United Universe. You should have known that."
Michael blushed. He should indeed. For a year prior to his leaving the Lodge, he had carefully studied the customs and tabus of the Universe so that he should be able to enter the new life he planned for himself, with confidence and ease. Under the system of universal kinship, all the customs and all the tabus of all the planets were the law on all the other planets. For the Wise Ones had decided many years before that wars arose from not understanding one's fellows, not sympathizing with them. If every nation, every planet, every solar system had the same laws, customs, and habits, they reasoned, there would be no differences, and hence no wars.
Future events had proved them to be correct. For five hundred years there had been no war in the United Universe, and there was peace and plenty for all. Only one crime was recognized throughout the solar systems—injuring a fellow-creature by word or deed (and the telepaths of Aldebaran were still trying to add thought to the statute).
Why, then, Michael had questioned the Father Superior, was there any reason for the Lodge's existence, any reason for a group of humans to retire from the world and live in the simple ways of their primitive forefathers? When there had been war, injustice, tyranny, there had, perhaps, been an understandable emotional reason for fleeing the world. But now why refuse to face a desirable reality? Why turn one's face upon the present and deliberately go back to the life of the past—the high collars, vests and trousers, the inefficient coal furnaces, the rude gasoline tractors of medieval days?
The Father Superior had smiled. "You are not yet a fully fledged Brother, Michael. You cannot enter your novitiate until you've achieved your majority, and you won't be thirty for another five years. Why don't you spend some time outside and see how you like it?"
Michael had agreed, but before leaving he had spent months studying the ways of the United Universe. He had skimmed over Earth, because he had been so sure he'd know its ways instinctively. Remembering his preparations, he was astonished by his smug self-confidence.
A large scarlet pencil jumped merrily across the advideo screen. The face on the eraser opened its mouth and sang: "Our pencils are finest from point up to rubber, for the lead is from Yed, while the wood comes from Dschubba."
"Is there any way of turning that thing off?" Michael wanted to know.
The other man smiled. "If there were, my boy, do you think anybody would watch it? Furthermore, turning it off would violate the spirit of free enterprise. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"Oh, no!" Michael agreed hastily. "Certainly not."
"And it might hurt the advertiser's feelings, cause him ego injury."
"How could I ever have had such a ridiculous idea?" Michael murmured, abashed.
"Allow me to introduce myself," said his companion. "My name is Pierce B. Carpenter. Aphrodisiacs are my line. Here's my card." He handed Michael a transparent tab with the photograph of Mr. Carpenter suspended inside, together with his registration number, his name, his address, and the Universal seal of approval. Clearly he was a character of the utmost respectability.
"My name's Michael Frey," the young man responded, smiling awkwardly.
"I'm afraid I don't have any cards."
"Well, you wouldn't have had any use for them where you were. Now, look here, son," Carpenter went on in a lowered voice, "I know you've just come from the Lodge and the mistakes you'll make will be through ignorance rather than deliberate malice. But the police wouldn't understand. You know what the sacred writings say: 'Ignorance of The Law is no excuse.' I'd be glad to give you any little tips I can. For instance, your hands...."
Michael spread his hands out in front of him. They were perfectly good hands, he thought. "Is there something wrong with them?"
Carpenter blushed and looked away. "Didn't you know that on Electra it is forbidden for anyone to appear in public with his hands bare?"
"Of course I know that," Michael said impatiently. "But what's that got to do with me?"
The salesman was wide-eyed. "But if it is forbidden on Electra, it becomes automatically prohibited here."
"But Electrans have eight fingers on each hand," Michael protested,
"with two fingernails on each—all covered with green scales."
Carpenter drew himself up as far as it was possible to do so while lying down. "Do eight fingers make one a lesser Universal?"
"Of course not, but—"
"Is he inferior to you then because he has sixteen fingernails?"
"Certainly not, but—"
"Would you like to be called guilty of—" Carpenter paused before the dreaded word—" intolerance ?"
"No, no, no !" Michael almost shrieked. It would be horrible for him to be arrested before he even had time to view Portyork. "I have lots of gloves in my pack," he babbled. "Lots and lots. I'll put some on right away."
With nervous haste, he pressed the lever which dropped his pack down from the storage compartment. It landed on his stomach. The device had been invented by one of the Dschubbans who are, as everyone knows, hoop-shaped.
Michael pushed the button marked Gloves A , and a pair of yellow gauntlets slid out.
Carpenter pressed his hands to his eyes. "Yellow is the color of death on Saturn, and you know how morbid the Saturnians are about passing away! No one ever wears yellow!"
"Sorry," Michael said humbly. The button marked Gloves B yielded a pair of rose-colored gloves which harmonized ill with his scarlet tunic and turquoise breeches, but he was past caring for esthetic effects.
"The quality's high," sang a quartet of beautiful female humanoids,
"but the price is meager. You know when you buy Plummy Fruitcake from Vega."
The salesman patted Michael's shoulder. "You staying a while in Portyork?" Michael nodded. "Then you'd better stick close to me for a while until you learn our ways. You can't run around loose by yourself until you've acquired civilized behavior patterns, or you'll get into trouble."
"Thank you, sir," Michael said gratefully. "It's very kind of you."
He twisted himself around—it was boiling hot inside the jet bus and his damp clothes were clinging uncomfortably—and struck his head against the bottom of the shelf above. "Awfully inconvenient arrangement here," he commented. "Wonder why they don't have seats."
"Because this arrangement," Carpenter said stiffly, "is the one that has proved suitable for the greatest number of intelligent life-forms."
"Oh, I see," Michael murmured. "I didn't get a look at the other passengers. Are there many extraterrestrials on the bus?"
"Dozens of them. Haven't you heard the Sirians singing?"
A low moaning noise had been pervading the bus, but Michael had thought it arose from defective jets.
"Oh, yes!" he agreed. "And very beautiful it is, too! But so sad."
"Sirians are always sad," the salesman told him. "Listen."
Michael strained his ears past the racket of the advideo. Sure enough, he could make out words: "Our wings were unfurled in a far distant world, our bodies are pain-racked, delirious. And never, it seems, will we see, save in dreams, the bright purple swamps of our Sirius...."
Carpenter brushed away a tear. "Poignant, isn't it?"
"Very, very touching," Michael agreed. "Are they sick or something?"
"Oh, no; they wouldn't have been permitted on the bus if they were. They're just homesick. Sirians love being homesick. That's why they leave Sirius in such great numbers."
"Fasten your suction disks, please," the stewardess, a pretty two-headed Denebian, ordered as she walked up and down the gangway.
"We're coming into Portyork. I have an announcement to make to all passengers on behalf of the United Universe. Zosma was admitted into the Union early this morning."
All the passengers cheered.
"Since it is considered immodest on Zosma," she continued, "ever to appear with the heads bare, henceforward it will be tabu to be seen in public without some sort of head-covering."
Wild scrabbling sounds indicated that all the passengers were searching their packs for headgear. Michael unearthed a violet cap.
The salesmen unfolded what looked like a medieval opera hat in piercingly bright green.
"Always got to keep on your toes," he whispered to the younger man.
"The Universe is expanding every minute."
The bus settled softly on the landing field and the passengers flew, floated, crawled, undulated, or walked out. Michael looked around him curiously. The Lodge had contained no extraterrestrials, for such of those as sought seclusion had Brotherhoods on their own planets.
Of course, even in Angeles he had seen other-worlders—humanoids from Vega, scaly Electrans, the wispy ubiquitous Sirians—but nothing to compare with the crowds that surged here. Scarlet Meropians rubbed tentacles with bulging-eyed Talithans; lumpish gray Jovians plodded alongside graceful, spidery Nunkians. And there were countless others whom he had seen pictured in books, but never before in reality.
The gaily colored costumes and bodies of these beings rendered kaleidoscopic a field already brilliant with red-and-green lights and banners. The effect was enhanced by Mr. Carpenter, whose emerald-green cloak was drawn back to reveal a chartreuse tunic and olive-green breeches which had apparently been designed for a taller and somewhat less pudgy man.
Carpenter rubbed modestly gloved hands together. "I have no immediate business, so supposing I start showing you the sights. What would you like to see first, Mr. Frey? Or would you prefer a nice, restful movid?"
"Frankly," Michael admitted, "the first thing I'd like to do is get myself something to eat. I didn't have any breakfast and I'm famished." Two small creatures standing close to him giggled nervously and scuttled off on six legs apiece.
"Shh, not so loud! There are females present." Carpenter drew the youth to a secluded corner. "Don't you know that on Theemim it's frightfully vulgar to as much as speak of eating in public?"
"But why?" Michael demanded in too loud a voice. "What's wrong with eating in public here on Earth?"
Carpenter clapped a hand over the young man's mouth. "Hush," he cautioned. "After all, on Earth there are things we don't do or even mention in public, aren't there?"
"Well, yes. But those are different."
"Not at all. Those rules might seem just as ridiculous to a Theemimian. But the Theemimians have accepted our customs just as we have accepted the Theemimians'. How would you like it if a Theemimian violated one of our tabus in public? You must consider the feelings of the Theemimians as equal to your own. Observe the golden rule: 'Do unto extraterrestrials as you would be done by.'"
"But I'm still hungry," Michael persisted, modulating his voice, however, to a decent whisper. "Do the proprieties demand that I starve to death, or can I get something to eat somewhere?"
"Naturally," the salesman whispered back. "Portyork provides for all bodily needs. Numerous feeding stations are conveniently located throughout the port, and there must be some on the field."
After gazing furtively over his shoulder to see that no females were watching, Carpenter approached a large map of the landing field and pressed a button. A tiny red light winked demurely for an instant.
"That's the nearest one," Carpenter explained.
Inside a small, white, functional-looking building unobtrusively marked "Feeding Station," Carpenter showed Michael where to insert a two-credit piece in a slot. A door slid back and admitted Michael into a tiny, austere room, furnished only with a table, a chair, a food compartment, and an advideo. The food consisted of tabloid synthetics and was tasteless. Michael knew that only primitive creatures waste time and energy in growing and preparing natural foods. It was all a matter of getting used to this stuff, he thought glumly, as he tried to chew food that was meant to be gulped.
A ferret-eyed Yeddan appeared on the advideo. "Do you suffer from gastric disorders? Does your viscera get in your hair? A horrid condition, but swift abolition is yours with Al-Brom from Altair."
Michael finished his meal in fifteen minutes and left the compartment to find Carpenter awaiting him in the lobby, impatiently glancing at the luminous time dial embedded in his wrist.
"Let's go to the Old Town," he suggested to Michael. "It will be of great interest to a student and a newcomer like yourself."
A few yards away from the feeding station, the travel agents were lined up in rows, each outside his spaceship, each shouting the advantages of the tour he offered:
"Better than a mustard plaster is a weekend spent on Castor."
"If you want to show you like her, take her for a week to Spica."
"Movid stars go to Mars."
Carpenter smiled politely at them. "No space trips for us today, gentlemen. We're staying on Terra." He guided the bewildered young man through the crowds and to the gates of the field. Outside, a number of surface vehicles were lined up, with the drivers loudly competing for business.
"Come, take a ride in my rocket car, suited to both gent and lady, lined with luxury hukka fur brought from afar, and perfumed with rare scents from Algedi."
"Whichever movid film you choose to view will be yours in my fine cab from Mizar. Just press a button—it won't cost you nuttin'—see a passionate drama of long-vanished Mu or the bloodhounds pursuing Eliza."
"All honor be laid at the feet of free trade, but, whatever your race or your birth, each passenger curls up with two dancing girls who rides in the taxi from Earth."
"Couldn't we—couldn't we walk? At least part of the way?" Michael faltered.
Carpenter stared. "Walk! Don't you know it's forbidden to walk more than two hundred yards in any one direction? Fomalhautians never walk."
"But they have no feet."
"That has nothing whatsoever to do with it."
Carpenter gently urged the young man into the Algedian cab ... which reeked. Michael held his nose, but his mentor shook his head. "No, no! Tpiu Number Five is the most esteemed aroma on Algedi. It would break the driver's heart if he thought you didn't like it. You wouldn't want to be had up for ego injury, would you?"
"Of course not," Michael whispered weakly.
"Brunettes are darker and blondes are fairer," the advideo informed him, "when they wash out their hair with shampoos made on Chara."
After a time, Michael got more or less used to Tpiu Number Five and was able to take some interest in the passing landscape. Portyork, the biggest spaceport in the United Universe, was, of course, the most cosmopolitan city—cosmopolitan in its architecture as well as its inhabitants. Silver domes of Earth were crowded next to the tall helical edifices of the Venusians.
"You'll notice that the current medieval revival has even reached architecture," Carpenter pointed out. "See those period houses in the Frank Lloyd Wright and Inigo Jones manner?"
"Very quaint," Michael commented.
Great floating red and green balls lit the streets, even though it was still daylight, and long scarlet-and-emerald streamers whipped out from the most unlikely places. As Michael opened his mouth to inquire about this, "We now interrupt the commercials," the advideo said, "to bring you a brand new version of one of the medieval ballads that are becoming so popular...."
"I shall scream," stated Carpenter, "if they play Beautiful Blue Deneb just once more.... No, thank the Wise Ones, I've never heard this before."
"Thuban, Thuban, I've been thinking," sang a buxom Betelgeusian, "what a Cosmos this could be, if land masses were transported to replace the wasteful sea."
"I guess the first thing for me to do," Michael began in a businesslike manner, "is to get myself a room at a hotel.... What have I said now?"
"The word hotel ," Carpenter explained through pursed lips, "is not used in polite society any more. It has come to have unpleasant connotations. It means—a place of dancing girls. I hardly think...."
"Certainly not," Michael agreed austerely. "I merely want a lodging."
"That word is also—well, you see," Carpenter told him, "on Zaniah it is unthinkable to go anywhere without one's family."
"They're a sort of ant, aren't they? The Zaniahans, I mean."
"More like bees. So those creatures who travel—" Carpenter lowered his voice modestly "— alone hire a family for the duration of their stay. There are a number of families available, but the better types come rather high. There has been talk of reviving the old-fashioned price controls, but the Wise Ones say this would limit free enterprise as much as—if you'll excuse my use of the expression—tariffs would."
The taxi let them off at a square meadow which was filled with transparent plastic domes housing clocks of all varieties, most of the antique type based on the old twenty-four hour day instead of the standard thirty hours. There were few extraterrestrial clocks because most non-humans had time sense, Michael knew, and needed no mechanical devices.
"This," said Carpenter, "is Times Square. Once it wasn't really square, but it is contrary to Nekkarian custom to do, say, imply, or permit the existence of anything that isn't true, so when Nekkar entered the Union, we had to square off the place. And, of course, install the clocks. Finest clock museum in the Union, I understand."
"The pictures in my history books—" Michael began.
"Did I hear you correctly, sir?" The capes of a bright blue cloak trembled with the indignation of a scarlet, many-tentacled being. "Did you use the word history ?" He pronounced it in terms of loathing. "I have been grossly insulted and I shall be forced to report you to the police, sir."
"Please don't!" Carpenter begged. "This youth has just come from one of the Brotherhoods and is not yet accustomed to the ways of our universe. I know that, because of the great sophistication for which your race is noted, you will overlook this little gaucherie on his part."
"Well," the red one conceded, "let it not be said that Meropians are not tolerant. But, be careful, young man," he warned Michael. "There are other beings less sophisticated than we. Guard your tongue, or you might find yourself in trouble."
He indicated the stalwart constable who, splendid in gold helmet and gold-spangled pink tights, surveyed the terrain haughtily from his floating platform in the air.
"I should have told you," Carpenter reproached himself as the Meropian swirled off. "Never mention the word 'history' in front of a Meropian. They rose from barbarism in one generation, and so they haven't any history at all. Naturally, they're sensitive in the extreme about it."
"Naturally," Michael said. "Tell me, Mr. Carpenter, is there some special reason for everything being decorated in red and green? I noticed it along the way and it's all over here, too."
"Why, Christmas is coming, my boy," Carpenter answered, surprised.
"It's July already—about time they got started fixing things up. Some places are so slack, they haven't even got their Mother's Week shrines cleared away."
A bevy of tiny golden-haired, winged creatures circled slowly over Times Square.
"Izarians," Carpenter explained "They're much in demand for Christmas displays."
The small mouths opened and clear soprano voices filled the air: "It came upon the midnight clear, that glorious song of old, from angels bending near the Earth to tune their harps of gold. Peace on Earth, good will to men, from Heaven's All-Celestial. Peace to the Universe as well and every extraterrestrial.... Beat the drum and clash the cymbals; buy your Christmas gifts at Nimble's."
"This beautiful walk you see before you," Carpenter said, waving an expository arm, "shaded by boogil trees from Dschubba, is called Broadway. To your left you will be delighted to see—"
"Listen, could we—" Michael began.
"—Forty-second Street, which is now actually the forty-second—"
"By the way—"
"It is extremely rude and hence illegal," Carpenter glared, "to interrupt anyone who is speaking."
"But I would like," Michael whispered very earnestly, "to get washed. If I might."
The other man frowned. "Let me see. I believe one of the old landmarks was converted into a lavatory. Only thing of suitable dimensions. Anyhow, it was absolutely useless for any other purpose. We have to take a taxi there; it's more than two hundred yards. Custom, you know."
"A taxi? Isn't there one closer?"
"Ah, impatient youth! There aren't too many altogether. The installations are extremely expensive."
They hailed the nearest taxi, which happened to be one of the variety equipped with dancing girls. Fortunately the ride was brief.
Michael gazed at the Empire State Building with interest. It was in a remarkable state of preservation and looked just like the pictures in his history—in his books, except that none of them showed the huge golden sign "Public-Washport" riding on its spire.
Attendants directed traffic from a large circular desk in the lobby.
"Mercurians, seventy-eighth floor. A group Vegans, fourteenth floor right. B group, fourteenth floor left. C group, fifteenth floor right. D group, fifteenth floor left. Sirians, forty-ninth floor. Female humans fiftieth floor right, males, fiftieth floor left. Uranians, basement...."
Carpenter and Michael shared an elevator with a group of sad-eyed, translucent Sirians, who were singing as usual and accompanying themselves on wemps , a cross between a harp and a flute. "Foreign planets are strange and we're subject to mange. Foreign atmospheres prove deleterious. Only with our mind's eye can we sail through the sky to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The cost of the compartment was half that of the feeding station; one credit in the slot unlocked the door. There was an advideo here, too:
"Friend, do you clean yourself each day? Now, let's not be evasive, for each one has his favored way. Some use an abrasive and some use oil. Some shed their skins, in a brand-new hide emerging. Some rub with grease put up in tins. For others there's deterging. Some lick themselves to take off grime. Some beat it off with rope. Some cook it away in boiling lime. Old-fashioned ones use soap. More ways there are than I recall, and each of these will differ, but the only one that works for all is Omniclene from Kiffa."
"And now," smiled Carpenter as the two humans left the building, "we must see you registered for a nice family. Nothing too ostentatious, but, on the other hand, you mustn't count credits and ally yourself beneath your station."
Michael gazed pensively at two slender, snakelike Difdans writhing
"Only 99 Shopping Days Till Christmas" across an aquamarine sky.
"They won't be permanent?" he asked. "The family, I mean?"
"Certainly not. You merely hire them for whatever length of time you choose. But why are you so anxious?"
The young man blushed. "Well, I'm thinking of having a family of my own some day. Pretty soon, as a matter of fact."
Carpenter beamed. "That's nice; you're being adopted! I do hope it's an Earth family that's chosen you—it's so awkward being adopted by extraterrestrials."
"Oh, no! I'm planning to have my own. That is, I've got a—a girl, you see, and I thought after I had secured employment of some kind in Portyork, I'd send for her and we'd get married and...."
" Married! " Carpenter was now completely shocked. "You mustn't use that word! Don't you know marriage was outlawed years ago? Exclusive possession of a member of the opposite sex is slavery on Talitha. Furthermore, supposing somebody else saw your—er—friend and wanted her also; you wouldn't wish him to endure the frustration of not having her, would you?"
Michael squared his jaw. "You bet I would."
Carpenter drew himself away slightly, as if to avoid contamination.
"This is un-Universal. Young man, if I didn't have a kind heart, I would report you."
Michael was too preoccupied to be disturbed by this threat. "You mean if I bring my girl here, I'd have to share her?"
"Certainly. And she'd have to share you. If somebody wanted you, that is."
"Then I'm not staying here," Michael declared firmly, ashamed to admit even to himself how much relief his decision was bringing him. "I don't think I like it, anyhow. I'm going back to the Brotherhood."
There was a short cold silence.
"You know, son," Carpenter finally said, "I think you might be right. I don't want to hurt your feelings—you promise I won't hurt your feelings?" he asked anxiously, afraid, Michael realized, that he might call a policeman for ego injury.
"You won't hurt my feelings, Mr. Carpenter."
"Well, I believe that there are certain individuals who just cannot adapt themselves to civilized behavior patterns. It's much better for them to belong to a Brotherhood such as yours than to be placed in one of the government incarceratoriums, comfortable and commodious though they are."
"Much better," Michael agreed.
"By the way," Carpenter went on, "I realize this is just vulgar curiosity on my part and you have a right to refuse an answer without fear of hurting my feelings, but how do you happen to have a—er—girl when you belong to a Brotherhood?"
Michael laughed. "Oh, 'Brotherhood' is merely a generic term. Both sexes are represented in our society."
"On Talitha—" Carpenter began.
"I know," Michael interrupted him, like the crude primitive he was and always would be. "But our females don't mind being generic."
A group of Sirians was traveling on the shelf above him on the slow, very slow jet bus that was flying Michael back to Angeles, back to the Lodge, back to the Brotherhood, back to her. Their melancholy howling was getting on his nerves, but in a little while, he told himself, it would be all over. He would be back home, safe with his own kind.
"When our minds have grown tired, when our lives have expired, when our sorrows no longer can weary us, let our ashes return, neatly packed in an urn, to the bright purple swamps of our Sirius."
The advideo crackled: "The gown her fairy godmother once gave to Cinderella was created by the haute couture of fashion-wise Capella."
The ancient taxi was there, the one that Michael had taken from the Lodge, early that morning, to the little Angeleno landing field, as if it had been waiting for his return.
"I see you're back, son," the driver said without surprise. He set the noisy old rockets blasting. "I been to Portyork once. It's not a bad place to live in, but I hate to visit it."
"I'm back!" Michael sank into the motheaten sable cushions and gazed with pleasure at the familiar landmarks half seen in the darkness. "I'm back! And a loud sneer to civilization!"
"Better be careful, son," the driver warned. "I know this is a rural area, but civilization is spreading. There are secret police all over. How do you know I ain't a government spy? I could pull you in for insulting civilization."
The elderly black and white advideo flickered, broke into purring sound: "Do you find life continues to daze you? Do you find for a quick death you hanker? Why not try the new style euthanasia, performed by skilled workmen from Ancha?"
Not any more, Michael thought contentedly. He was going home.
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What is the significance of Garve leaving the ship and following the call of the city?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Beast-Jewel of Mars by V. E. Thiessen.
Relevant chunks:
The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
Question:
What is the significance of Garve leaving the ship and following the call of the city?
Answer:
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[
"Eric is determined to destroy the city without exploring it, no matter how tempting it is. But Garve's note forces the eldest brother to follow and help his brother out. The whole course of events changes and Eric has to return to the city, which he left with such an effort. This leads to Eric being endangered, captured and almost killed. From another point, it leads to Eric learning more about the city and they legend. If he destroyed the city as he wanted to, he would fulfill the prophecy without knowing. He would have considered the whole city an illusion without knowing it was a machine initially created for a good purpose. His return to the city also leads to his encounter with the beautiful girl, whose presence makes Eric happy. ",
"Garve leaving the ship and following the call of the city is very significant to the plot. Before Eric realised that Garve had gone to the city, he was planning on destroying the place, with all of its inhabitants at once. Because Grave is missing, Eric must return to the city, where Garve has learned from the Elders about the legend of Eric the Bronze. Garve tries to take Eric to see the Elders, but Eric is captured by two civilians on the way. It is during this capture that Eric meets Nolette, who takes him to see the Elders. Because of Garve leaving the ship, the Elders are able to explain the history behind this mysterious city of Mars, and that he must be the one to destroy it. \n",
"Garve’s leaving serves as a reason and motive for Eric North to go back to the city. Knowing that Garve does not have a metal helmet nor does he has any weapons, Eric needs to go back to the city to bring Garve back. And because Eric goes back to the city, he is captured again, which leads to the next part of the story inside the Elder’s building. If Garve did not leave for the city, Eric might not be captured, encounter Nolette, and learn about the city from the Elders. ",
"Garve leaving the ship and following the city's call sets up the second return to the city. Since Eric had initially planned to destroy the city, Garve's insistence on going back again prevents him from doing so. Furthermore, this second trip allows Eric to meet the Elders and not get killed by the citizens. Once he meets the Elders, he is more knowledgeable about the city's prophesy and story. It also sets up the purpose of Eric the Bronze and whether Eric North will fulfill it or not. However, this is also significant to Garve because he shows that he loves the city and wants to stay in it, directly contradicting what Eric is supposed to do to the city. \n\n"
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63605
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The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
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What is the plot of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Beast-Jewel of Mars by V. E. Thiessen.
Relevant chunks:
The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
Question:
What is the plot of the story?
Answer:
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[
"Eric North, a man from Earth, is lying on his stomach and thinking whether he should go down to the bottom of the canal before him, where the beauty of the fabled city of Mars calls the youth. After a short resistance, Eric surrenders to the call of the city, rushes towards it and starts beating the gate to get in. Upon hearing Eric's name, the sentinel screams it out loud and strikes the man with hatred, mentioning some kind of a legend. A crowd full of hatred gathers, but Eric manages to escape from the city. Nevertheless, it calls again and he starts pleading at the gates to be let back, even though he knows it's insane. Shortly after, Eric realizes, with the help of taking off his hat, that the beauty is an illusion and walks away on a safe distance. He figures out putting the hat on and off confuses the machine and the illusion disappears. He decides to destroy the city without exploring further not to put himself and his brother in danger. Nevertheless, turns out that Garve, the brother, followed his curiosity and went to the city. When the two meet, Garve takes off Eric's head and mentions the legend about Eric which everyone in the city believes. While heading to the city center, the two are followed and Garve asks his brother not to use the gun, which results in Eric's capture. Eric bluffs, threatening people with the prophecy, but they decide to kill him. A respected young woman, Nolette, suddenly saves him and brings before the council. There Eric learns the story of the city, which is a small colony of those who chose to remain on Mars during the drought and a machine was created there to translate thought into reality. Now people become lustful, lose their will to learn and many of those banished have lost their minds. That's why the city has to be destroyed and Eric is the instrument. Then Eric is led to his quarters in the building of the Elders, and his brother stays in the city as well, though in another place.",
"Eric North, from Earth, is trying to escape the illusion of a grand, but evil city on Mars. A machine buried deep under the city is controlling this facade, to make the city unspeakably beautiful, luring Eric in. He tries his best to avert his eyes from the city, but sweet music pours out of it, and he goes back, banging on the door to be let in. He wears a copper helmet, designed to shield him from the fabricated beauty of the place, but it doesn't seem to work. He is met by a sentinel guarding the city, who attacks him with a sword when he tells the guard his name. He exclaims that Eric is \"Eric the Bronze''. Eric wakes up with the people of the city crowding around him. They agree to execute him, but Eric is able to escape, making it back to his ship, where he expects to meet his brother Garve. He realises that if he continues to take the helmet he is wearing on and off, he can see past the illusion of the city, for what it truly is, and escapes it's pull. When he arrives on the ship, he sees a note from Garve, telling Eric that he heard the sweet music of the city, and has gone to explore it. Eric takes two grenades and his pistol, and goes to save Garve. He scales the outer wall of the city, soon meeting Garve. He steals the copper helmet away from Eric, throwing it over the wall. He tells Eric to keep his face hidden so the people of the city won't see him. He relays how the elders of the city told him the legend of Eric The Bronze, whom they are going to see now. They are soon spotted and taken by two men to the centre of the city, where the mob plan on killing him again. Just then, a woman on a black horse appears. Her name is Nolette, The Daughter of the City. She takes Eric to the building in which the elders preside. Eric enters the room where they are waiting. They Tell Eric of how the city came to be. How the once lush Mars died, and the city was created to protect those who keep the ancient skills and science of Mars. The city is really a machine under their feet, and it can be changed into whatever an inhabitant thinks of. However, over time, the people grew drunk with the power of creation and turned evil. And so, it is time for the city to be destroyed. And as the prophecy states, Eric will be the one to carry out the destruction. They invite him to stay in the city with his brother until this time comes, and if after a while it doesn't, and the prophecy is wrong, he is free to go. ",
"The story starts with Eric North, an Earth man, laying on the ground in the canal where he can see the spires and minarets in the distance. Those minarets and the city attracts him, but his mind fights this dangerous thought and reminds him the possibility of becoming a soulless husk. He refuses to look at it and walks away from the city. However, after reaching the bottom of the canal, he runs towards the city. As he gets nearer, he can hear richer music. The sentinel assumes that he is Eric the Bronze from the legend and hits Eric with his sword. The other people in the city also look at him with hatred and want to whip him. He gets so scared that he runs away. When he is attracted to come back again, he realizes that his metal helmet is able to defend the illusions for a short while. Thus, on his way back to his ship he keeps putting the helmet on and taking it off. He assumes that the helmet’s electrical circuit is able to defend against the illusion for a while since it takes some time for the illusions to adjust the waves to affect him. Even though he seems very curious to learn more about the city, he decides to go back to the ship to his brother Grave North. \n\nOn the ship, Eric realizes that Grave had also heard the beautiful music from the city. While the music did not force Grave, his curiosity lead him to the city. Eric gets some explosives and goes back to the city. Climbing the city’s wall, he is greeted by a caricature form of his brother. The caricature tells him to get rid of his hat as they walk to the city center where the Elders are expecting him. Realizing that they are being followed, they run separately. When Eric is finally captured, he remembers that his brother told him to not use the gun. Thus, he uses superstition and tells them that a Legend cannot be defeated with some simple whips. They decide to kill him instead. Before he is killed, Nolette, the Daughter of the City, carries him to the Council on a horse. There, he learns that Eric the Bronze will destroy this city. He also acknowledges that the city is a product of a machine that translates the mass will of the citizens into reality. From the Elders, he learns about the banished ones and the ancient Legend. Finally, he is then to stay inside this building for some time. If he is not Eric the Legend, then he will be able stay or leave as he desires. ",
"Eric North finds the fabled city of Mars and hears strange music that he cannot resist. Although he tries to turn away, the tune’s influence becomes too powerful. He runs to the city’s gates and demands to be let in. The gates swing open, and one of the well-dressed sentinels welcomes him. However, once he gives his name, the sentinel claims that he is Eric the Bronze and smashes his sword on Eric’s metal hat. When Eric wakes up again, he finds many beautiful citizens staring at him with hatred. He fears what the citizens will do and runs out of the city, despite the music telling him to come back. For a moment, the illusion of the beautiful city changes to one of evil and disgust. Eric walks away from the canal and examines how the illusions have affected him. His helmet has an electrical circuit that acts as a shield against any electrical waves that may affect his brain. Although Eric wants to know more, it is too dangerous. He finds his brother Garve North and plans to make arrangements to have the city destroyed. When Eric returns, Garve tells him about seeing the city and is going down to see it again. He selects two grenades and a pistol packed with explosive pellets as he goes back to investigate with Garve. After he returns, the illusion changes once again when he has his hat on and after Garve throws his hat out of the city walls. Garve reveals that he knows about Eric the Bronze legend and is taking him to see the Elders right now. The two of them are being followed by the citizens, and Garve tries to distract them. They realize that Eric is who they want; Eric wants to use his gun, but Garve warns him not to if he values his brother’s life. Instead, he tries to scare the citizens by bluffing, but they decide to kill him and stop the prophesy. Nolette, the Daughter of the City, suddenly appears and retrieves him from the angry crowd. She takes him to a building in the city center and tells him to go inside to see The Council. Six men and Nolette sit at a conference table, and they begin to discuss him. Nolette believes he is Eric the Bronze, while Kroon explains that he is prophesied to destroy the city. The city is also a machine built to protect the small colony of those on Mars after natural changes occurred. Kroon further explains that the Elders collectively control the city’s appearance, and the ancient builders prophesied that the machine would be destroyed by a man termed Eric the Bronze. The name Eric was chosen because it is an honorable name for the ancient fathers and a symbol of new beginnings for some. The Elders let Eric live with them, while Garve will live outside of the building. "
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63605
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The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
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What is the relationship between Eric and the citizens?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Beast-Jewel of Mars by V. E. Thiessen.
Relevant chunks:
The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
Question:
What is the relationship between Eric and the citizens?
Answer:
|
[
"Eric sees the citizens in the most beautiful way and is willing to join them. They, on the contrary, meet him with hatred as they hear his name. The citizens surround and try to attack Eric, they are superstitious and believe him to be the destroyer of the city from the legends. The Elders from the Council send one of them to save Eric. They also believe him to be part of the legend, but they know more about the city and the machine. They think that it's time for the city to be destroyed as it has changed, the machine doesn't do good anymore. Nolette, the daughter of the city, also believes Eric to be the legend and stops the crowd with the use of her authority from killing him. Eric is overwhelmed and he obeys the council, listening with curiosity. He also feels happiness near the girl. ",
"The relationship between Eric and the citizens of the fabricated city is a very strange, tense and violent one. The citizens believe that Eric is \"Eric the Bronze\" and man from Earth who is prophesied to destroy their city. Eric first meets a citizen at the gate to the city, when he mentions his name, the guard strikes him in the head with his sword. He is taken into the city by the guard, where the crowd debate on killing him. He is seen as a threat to their very existence. Later, when Eric returns to the city once again to rescue his brother Garve, is captured by two men, who take him to the centre of the city, also preparing to beat and kill him. He is only saved by Nolette, Daughter of the City, and the respect the citizens have for her. \n",
"The first time he enters the city, the sentinel assumes that he is Eric the Bronze from the legend and hits Eric with a sword. The citizens stare at him with red hatred in their eyes once they learn that he is Eric the Bronze, here to destroy the city. The crowd are chanting for whips. Once he escapes the city, the gate closes right behind him. Later, when he enters the city again, he is taken prisoner by the citizens once more. They look at him coldly, calculatingly and are suggesting to whip him. However, once he speaks, they stand still and fear his words. However, a few seconds later, they decide to kill him at once so that he will not keep on coming back. Despite the hatred of the citizens, the Elders are quite friendly and they tell him about this city and the legend. They tell Eric to dwell in the building, assuring his safety. Once they find out that he is not Eric the Legend, he can choose to stay or go. ",
"There is a one-sided hateful relationship between Eric and the citizens. When the sentinel first assumes that Eric is Eric the Bronze, there is a flame of blue hatred in his eyes. Even after he wakes up, all the beautiful citizens stare at him with red hate. They want ships to be brought into the city to scourge him from it and yell for whips. An older man even strikes him on the hat and back with a stick. On the other hand, Eric is confused by all of this because he initially has no idea of the prophesy until the Elders explain it. When he returns to the city again, the citizens conclude that they should kill Eric. One of the guards even prepares to slash his sword downward on Eric’s neck until Nolette intervenes. "
] |
63605
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The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
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What kind of city Eric finds himself in?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Beast-Jewel of Mars by V. E. Thiessen.
Relevant chunks:
The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
Question:
What kind of city Eric finds himself in?
Answer:
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[
"The city is located on Mars. It was created a long time ago when Mars was flourishing. When most Martians left the planet because of the drought, a small colony remained in this place. Back then a machine, which is the whole city, was created to protect this small group. The machine translates thought into reality. It was used for the people in the city to receive all the necessary for life. At first, Eric considered it an illusion. The city captures thoughts with the use of a device and Eric's hat was an obstacle. Putting it on and off confused the machine and Eric was able to see the real ugliness of the city. When one gets into the radius of the machine, he is also called by it and can not refuse the city's beauty. When one doesn't look at the beautiful city, a voice still calls him. Many try to make their lustful desires real, they are banished for that and go mad. That's why the machine is not doing only good things anymore and should be destroyed in accordance with the prophecy. There is the council in the center of the city, whose Eldest know all about the origin of the machine. The members of the council, such as the daughter of the city, are respected by all the citizens. ",
"The city that Eric finds himself in is very strange, as it is not really a city at all. It is in fact, a machine buried underground. It was created so that the inhabitants that colonise this area could create whatever their hearts desired from the sand of the great deserts of mars. Beautiful music emanates out of it. The buildings of the city are towers that sparkle with jewels. In the centre of the city is a street covered in blue fur. All the people of the city seem to be more stunning than humanly possible. But the city is a lie. In truth, it holds ugliness and evil. It's inhabitants, while beautiful on the outside, are greedy, and drunk with power. \n",
"Eric first has illusions of long streets of fur, jewels, wine, and fair women. When he gets to the city, he sees high walls surrounding the city and a gate carved with lotus blossoms. While the women in the city are beautiful, they stare at him with hatred. The city has wide fur streets going toward the center. The Elder’s building is cubical. It is in direct contrast with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. In the conference room in the Elder’s building, he learns that the city is very old. It dates back to when the canals has clear, green water and the deserts have plants. This city is the product of a machine that translates the mass will of the citizens into reality. He learns that the outward appearance of the city is maintained by the combined power of their imaginations. ",
"Eric finds himself in a city that is actually a machine built to protect a small colony of the remaining inhabitants on Mars. The nature of the machine itself is to translate thought into reality, which is why the Elders can build and control its outward appearance. Many of the things in the city can be made from the machine by transmuting red dust in the desert to any desired material. The construction device of the machine then assembles the material into any pattern that has been recorded from one’s thought. Even with the many beautiful citizens, including Garve, after they return the second time, it is all an illusion as part of the machine. "
] |
63605
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The Beast-Jewel of Mars
By V. E. THIESSEN
The city was strange, fantastic, beautiful. He'd never been there before, yet already he was a fabulous legend—a dire, hateful legend.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
He lay on his stomach, a lean man in faded one piece dungarees, and an odd metallic hat, peering over the side of the canal. Behind him the little winds sifted red dust into his collar, but he could not move; he could only sit there with his gaze riveted on the spires and minarets that twinkled in the distance, far down the bottom of the canal.
One part of his mind said, This is it, this is the fabled city of Mars. This is the beauty and the fantasy and the music of the legends, and I must go down there. Yet somewhere deeper in his mind, deep in the primal urges that kept him from death, the warning was taut and urgent. Get away. They have a part of your mind now. Get away from the city before you lose it all. Get away before your body becomes a husk, a soulless husk to walk the low canals with sightless eyes, like those who came before you.
He strained to push back from the edge, trying to get that fantastic beauty out of his sight. He fought the lids of his eyes, fought to close them while he pushed himself back, but they remained open, staring at the jeweled towers, and borne on the little winds the thin wail of music reached him, saying, Come into the city, come down into the fabled city .
He slid over the edge, sliding down the sloping sides of the canal. The rough sandstone tore at his dungarees, tore at his elbow where it touched but he did not feel the pain. His face was turned toward the towers, and the sound of his breathing was less than human.
His feet caught a projecting bit of stone and were slowed for an instant, so that he turned sideways and rolled on, down into the red dust bottom of the canal, to lie face down in the dust, with the chin strap of the odd metallic hat cutting cruelly into his chin.
He lay there an instant, knowing that now he had a chance. With his face down like this, and the dust smarting his eyes the image was gone for an instant. He had to get away, he knew that. He had to mount the sides of the canal and never look back.
He told himself, "I am Eric North, from Earth, the Third Planet of Sol, and this is not real."
He squirmed in the dust, feeling it bite his cheeks; he squirmed until he could get up and see nothing but the red sand stone walls of the canal. He ran at the walls and clawed his way up like an animal in his haste. He wouldn't look again.
The wind freshened and the tune of the music began to talk to him. It told of going barefoot over long streets of fur. It told of jewels, and wine, and women as fair as springtime. These and more were in the city, waiting for him to claim them.
He sobbed, and clawed forward. He stopped to rest, and slowly his head began to turn. He turned, and the spires and minarets twinkled at him, beautiful, soothing, stopping the tears that had welled down his cheeks.
When he reached the bottom of the canal he began to run toward the city.
When he came to the city there was a high wall around it, and a heavy gate carved with lotus blossoms. He beat against the gate and cried,
"Oh! Let me in. Let me in to the city!" The music was richer now, as if it were everywhere, and the gate swung open without the faintest sound.
A sentinel stood before the opened gate at the end of a long blue street. He was dressed in red silk with his sleeves edged in blue leopard skin, and he wore a belt with a jeweled short sword. He drew the sword from its scabbard, and bowed forward until the point of the sword touched the street of blue fur. He said, "I give you the welcome of my sword, and the welcome of the city. Speak your name so that it may be set in the records of the dreamers."
The music sang, and the spires twinkled, and Eric said, "I am Eric North!"
The sword point jerked, and the sentinel straightened. His face was white. He cried aloud, "It is Eric the Bronze. It is Eric of the Legend." He whirled the sword aloft, and smashed it upon Eric's metal hat, and the hatred was a blue flame in his eyes.
When Eric regained consciousness the people of the city were all about him. They were very fair, and the women were more beautiful than music. Yet now they stared at him with red hate in their eyes. An older man came forward and struck at the copper hat with a stick. The clang deafened Eric and the man cried, "You are right. It is Eric the Bronze. Bring the ships and let him be scourged from the city."
The man drew back the stick and struck again, and Eric's back took fire with the blow. The crowd chanted, "Whips, bring the whips," and fear forced Eric to his feet. He fled then, running on the heedless feet of panic, outstripping those who were behind him until he passed through the great gates into the red dust floor of the canal. The gates closed behind him, and the dust beat upon him, and he paused, his heart hammering inside his chest like a great bell clapper. He turned and looked behind to be sure he was safe.
The towers twinkled at him, and the music whispered to him, "Come back, Eric North. Come back to the city."
He turned and stumbled back to the great gate and hammered on it until his fists were raw, pleading for it to open and let him back.
And deep inside him some part of his mind said, "This is a madness you cannot escape. The city is evil, an evil like you have never known," and a fear as old as time coursed through his frame.
He seized the copper hat from his head, and beat on the lotus carvings of the great door, crying, "Let me in! Please, take me back into the city."
And as he beat the city changed. It became dull and sordid and evil, a city of disgust, with every part offensive to the eye. The spires and minarets were gargoyles of hatred, twisted and misshapen, and the sound of the city was a macabre song of hate.
He stared, and his back was chill with superstitions as old as the beginning of man. The city flickered, changing before his eyes until it was beautiful again.
He stood, amazed, and put the metal hat back on his head. With the motion the shift took place again, and beauty was ugliness. Amazed, he stared at the illusion, and the thought came to him that the metal hat had not entirely failed him after all.
He turned and began to walk away from the city, and when it began to call he took the hat off his head and found peace for a time. Then when it began again he replaced the hat, and revulsion sped his footsteps. And so, hat on, hat off, he made his way down the dusty floor of the canal, and up the rocky sides until he stood on the Martian desert, and the canal was a thin line behind him. He breathed easily then, for he was beyond the range of the illusions.
And now that his mind was his own again he began to study the problem, and to understand something of the nature of the forces against which he had been pitted.
The helmet contained an electrical circuit, designed as a shield against electrical waves tuned to affect his brain. But the hat had failed because the city, whatever it was, had adjusted to this revised pattern as he had approached it. Hence, the helmet had been no defense against illusion. However, when he had jerked the helmet off suddenly to beat on the door, his mental pattern had changed, too suddenly, and the machine caught up only after he had glimpsed another image. Then as the illusion adjusted replacing the helmet threw it off again.
He grinned wryly. He would have liked to know more about the city, whatever it was. He would have liked to know more about the people he had seen, whether they were real or part of the illusion, and if they were as ugly as the second city had been.
Yet the danger was too great. He would go back to his ship and make the arrangements to destroy the city. The ship was armed, and to deliver indirect fire over the edge of the canal would be simple enough. Garve North, his brother, waited back at the ship. If he knew of the city he would have to go there. Eric must not take a chance on that. After they had blasted whatever it was that lay in the canal floor, then it would be time enough to tell Garve, and go down to see what was left.
The ship rested easily on the flat sandstone area where he had established base camp. Its familiar lines brought a smile to Eric's face, a feeling of confidence now that tools and weapons were his again.
He opened the door and entered. The lock doors were left open so that he could enter directly into the body of the ship. He came in in a swift leap, calling, "Garve! Hey, Garve, where are you?"
The ship remained mute. He prowled through it, calling, "Garve," wondering where the young hothead had gone, and then he saw a note clipped to the control board of the ship. He tore it loose impatiently and began to read. Garve had scrawled:
"Funny thing, Eric. A while ago I thought I heard music. I walked down to the canal, and it seemed like there were lights, and a town of some sort far down the canal. I wanted to investigate, but thought I'd better come back. But the thing has been in my mind for hours now, and I'm going down to see what it is. If you want to follow, come straight down the canal."
Eric stared at the note, and the line of his jaw was white. Apparently Garve had seen the city from farther away, and its effect had not been so strong. Even so, Garve's natural curiosity had done the rest.
Garve had gone down to the city, and Garve had no shielded hat. Eric selected two high explosive grenades from the ship's arsenal. They were small but they packed a lot of power. He had a pistol packed with smaller pellets of the same explosive, and he had the hat. That should be adequate. He thrust the bronze hat back on his head and began walking back to the canal.
The return back to the city would always live in his mind as a phantasmagora, a montage of twisted hate and unseemly beauty. When he came again to the gate he did not attempt to enter, but circled the wall, hat on, hat off, stiff limbed like a puppet dancing to the same tune over and over again. He found a place where he could scale the wall, and thrust the helmet on his head, and clawed up the misshapen wall. It was all he could do to make himself drop into the ugly city.
He heard a familiar voice as he dropped. "Eric," the voice said. "Eric, you did come back." The voice was his brother's, and he whirled, seeking the voice. A figure stood before him, a twisted caricature of his brother. The figure cried, "The hat! You fool, get rid of that hat!" The caricature that was his brother seized the hat, and jerked so hard that the chin strap broke under Eric's chin. The hat was flung away and sailed high and far over the fence and outside the city.
The phantasm flickered, the illusion moved. Garve was now more handsome than ever, and the city was a dream of delight. Garve said, "Come," and Eric followed down a street of blue fur. He had no will to resist.
Garve said, "Keep your head down and your face hidden. If we meet someone you may not be recognized. They won't be expecting you from this side of the city."
Eric asked, "You knew I'd come after you?"
"Yes. The Legend said you'd be back."
Eric stopped and whirled to face his brother. "The Legend? Eric the Bronze? What is this wild fantasy?"
"Not so loud!" Garve's voice cautioned him. "Of course the crowd called you that because of the copper hat and your heavy tan. But the Elders believe so too. I don't know what it is, Eric, reincarnation, prophesy, superstition, I only know that when I was with the Elders I believed them. You are a part of a Legend. You are Eric the Bronze."
Eric looked down at his sun tanned hands and flexed them. He loosened the explosive pistol in its holster. At least he was going to be a well armed, well prepared Legend. And while one part of his mind marveled at the city and relaxed into a pleasure as deep as a dream, another struggled with the almost forgotten desire to rescue his brother and escape. He asked, "Who are the Elders?"
"We are going to them, to the center of the city." Garve's voice sharpened, "Keep your head down. I think the last two men we passed are looking after us. Don't look back."
After a moment Garve said, "I think they are following us. Get ready to run. If we are separated, keep going until you reach City Center. The Elders will be expecting you." Garve glanced back, and his voice sharpened, "Now! Run!"
They ran. But as they ran figures began to converge upon them. Farther up the street others appeared, cutting off their flight.
Garve cried, "In here," and pulled Eric into a crevice between two buildings. Eric drew his gun, and savagery began to dance in his eyes. The soft fur muffled sounds of pursuit closed in upon them.
Garve put one hand on Eric's gun hand and said, "Wait here. And if you value my life, don't use that gun." Then he was gone, running deerlike down the street.
For an instant Eric thought the ruse had succeeded. He heard cries and two men passed him running in pursuit. But then the cry came back. "Let him go. Get the other one. The other one."
Eric was seen an instant later, and the people of the city began to converge upon him. He could have destroyed them all with his charges in the gun, but his brother's warning shrieked in his ears, "If you value my life don't use the gun."
There was nothing he could do. Eric stood quietly until he was taken prisoner. They moved him to the center of the wide fur street. Two men held his arms, and twisted painfully. The crowd looked at him, coldly, calculatingly. One of them said, "Get the whips. If we whip him he will not come back." The city twinkled, and the music was so faint he could hardly hear it.
There was only one weapon Eric could use. He had gathered from Garve's words that these people were superstitious.
He laughed, a great chest-shattering laugh that gusted out into the thin Martian air. He laughed and cried in a great voice, "And can you so easily dispose of a Legend? If I am Eric of the Legend, can whips defeat the prophesy?"
There was an instant when he could have twisted loose. They stood, fear-bound at his words. But there was no place to hide, and without the use of his weapons Eric could not have gone far. He had to bluff it out.
Then one of the men cried, "Fools! It is true. We must take no chance with the whips. He would come back. But if he dies here before us now, then we may forget the prophesy."
The crowd murmured and a second voice cried, "Get the sword, get the guards, and kill him at once!"
Eric tensed to break away but now it was too late. His captors were alert. They increased the twist on his arms until he almost screamed with the pain.
The crowd parted, and the guard came through, his red silk clothing gleaming in the sun, his sword bright and deadly. He stopped before Eric, and the sword swirled up like a saber, ready for a slashing cut downward across Eric's neck.
A woman's voice, soft and yet authoritative, called, "Hold!" And a murmur of respect rippled through the crowd.
"Nolette! The Daughter of the City comes."
Eric turned his gaze to the side and saw the woman who had spoken. She was mounted upon a black horse with a jeweled bridle. She was young and her hair was long and free in the wind. She had ridden so softly across the fur street that no one had been aware of her presence.
She said, "Let me touch this man. Let me feel the pulse of his heart so that I may know if he is truly the Bronze one of the Legend. Give me your hand, stranger." She leaned down and grasped his hand. Eric shook his arms free, and reached up and clung to the offered hand, thinking,
"If I pull her down perhaps I can use her as a shield." He tensed his muscles and began to pull.
She cried, "No! You fool. Come up on the horse," and pulled back with an energy as fierce as his own. Then he had swung up on the horse, and the animal leaped forward, its muffled gallop beating out a tattoo of freedom.
Eric clung tightly to the girl's waist. He could feel the young suppleness of her body, and the fine strands of her hair kept swirling back into his face. It had a faint perfume, a clean and heady scent that made him more aware of the touch of her waist. He breathed deeply, oddly happy as they rode.
After five minutes ride they came to a building in the center of the city. The building was cubical, severe in line and architecture, and it contrasted oddly with the exquisite ornament of the rest of the city. It was as if it were a monolith from another time, a stranger crouched among enemies.
The girl halted before the structure and said, "Dismount here, Eric."
Eric swung down, his arms still tingling with pleasure where he had held her. She said, "Knock three times on the door. I will see you again inside. And thank your brother for sending me to bring you here."
Eric knocked on the door. The door was as plain as the building, made of a luminous plastic. It had all the beauty of the great gate door, but a more timeless, more functional beauty.
The door opened and an old man greeted Eric. "Come in. The Council awaits you. Follow me, please."
Eric followed down a hallway and into a large room. The room was obviously designed for a conference room. A great table stood in the room, made of the same luminous plastic as the door of the building. Six men sat at this conference table. Eric's guide placed him in a chair at the base of the T-shaped table.
There was one vacant seat beside the head of the T, and as Eric watched, the young woman who had rescued him entered and took her place there. She smiled at Eric, and the room took on a warmth that it had lacked with only the older men present. The man at her right, obviously presiding here looked at Eric and spoke. "I am Kroon, the eldest of the elders. We have brought you here to satisfy ourselves of your identity. In view of your danger in the City you are entitled to some sort of explanation." He glanced around the room and asked, "What is the judgment of the elders?"
Eric caught a faint nod here, a gesture there. Kroon nodded as if in satisfaction. He turned to the girl, "And what is your opinion, Daughter of the City?"
Nolette's expression held sorrow, as if she looked into the far future. She said, "He is Eric the Bronze. I have no doubt."
Eric asked, "And what is this Legend of Eric the Bronze? Why am I so despised in the city?"
Kroon answered, "According to the Ancient Legend you will destroy the city. This, and other things."
Eric gaped. No wonder the crowd had shown such hatred. But why were the elders so friendly? They were obviously the governing body, and if there was strife between them and the people it had not shown in the respect the crowd had accorded Nolette.
Kroon said, "I see you are puzzled. Let me tell you the story of the City. The City is old. It dates from long ago when the canals of Mars ran clear and green with water, and the deserts were vineyards and gardens. The drouth came, and the changes in climate, and soon it became plain that the people of Mars were doomed. They had ships, and could build more, and gradually they left to colonize other planets. Yet they could take little of their science. And fear and riots destroyed much. Also there were those who were filled with love for this homeland, and who thought that one day it might be habitable again. All the skill of the ancient Martian fathers went into the building of a giant machine, the machine that is the City, to protect a small colony of those who were chosen to remain on Mars."
"This whole city is a machine!" Eric asked.
"Yes, or the product of one. The heart of it lies underneath our feet, in caverns beneath this building. The nature of the machine is this, that it translates thought into reality."
Eric stared. The idea was staggering.
"This is essentially simple, although the technology is complex. It is necessary to have a recording device, to capture thought, a transmuting device capable of transmuting the red dust of the desert into any sort of material desired, and a construction device, to assemble this material into the pattern already recorded from thought." Kroon paused.
"You still doubt, my friend. Perhaps you are thirsty after your escape. Think strongly of a tall glass of cold water, visualize it in your mind, the sight and the fluidity and the touch of it."
Eric did so. Without warning a glass of water stood on the table before him. He touched the water to his lips. It was cool and satisfying. He drank it, convinced completely.
Eric asked, "And I am to destroy the City?"
"Yes. The time has come."
"But why?" Eric demanded. For an instant he could see the twinkling beauty as clearly as if he had stood outside the walls of this building.
Kroon said, "There are difficulties. The machine builds according to the mass will of the people, though it is sensitive to the individual in areas where it does not conflict with the imagination of the mass. We have had strangers, visitors, and even our own people, who grew drunk with the power of the machine, who dreamed more and more lust and greed into existence. These were banished from the city, and so strong is the call of the city that many of them became victims of their own evilness, and now walk mindlessly, with no thought but to seek for the beauty they have lost here."
Kroon sighed. "The people have lost the will to learn. Many do not even know of the machine. Our science is almost gone, and only a few of us, the dreamers, the elders, have kept alive the old knowledge of the machine and its history. By the collected powers of our imagination we build and control the outward appearance of the city.
"We have passed this down from father to son. A part of the ancient Legend is that the builders made provisions for the machine to be destroyed when contact with outsiders had been made once again, so that our people would again have to struggle forward to knowledge and power. The instrument of destruction was to be a man termed Eric the Bronze. It is not that you are reborn. It is just that sometime such a man would come."
Eric said, "I can understand the Bronze part. They had thought that a space man might well be sun tanned. They had thought that a science to protect against this beautiful illusion would provide a metal shield of some sort, probably copper in nature. That such a man should come is inevitable. But why Eric. Why the name Eric?"
For the first time Nolette spoke. She said quietly, "The name Eric was an honorable name of the ancient fathers. It must have been their thought that the new beginning should wait for some of their own far flung kind to return."
Eric nodded. He asked, "What happens now?"
"Nothing. Dwell here with us and you will be safe from our people. If the prediction is not soon fulfilled and you are not the Eric of the Legend, you may stay or go as you desire."
"My brother, Garve. What about him?"
"He loves the city. He will also stay, though he will be outside this building." Kroon clasped his hands. "Nolette, will you show Eric his quarters?"
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What is the relationship between Rat and Patti Gray?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prison Planet by Wilson Tucker.
Relevant chunks:
PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
Question:
What is the relationship between Rat and Patti Gray?
Answer:
|
[
"From the very beginning Patti is keen one Rat. When their gazes first meet she almost smiles back. She has to hide her goodwill as Rat is despised by the crew of the ship. The nurse is interested in his background and asks Roberds and Peterson. After learning about him leaving the post she wonders why he wasn't executed and feel sympathy for Rat. She visits him in secret to ask to pilot the ship, because her and the sick girl need to get to Earth as fast as possible and believe he can help. Rat does everything in a fast and well-organized way and plans to reach Earth in six days without brakes. He instructs Patti to cover herself in blankets not to get too hot and decides how the water will be distributed. He also tells about trying to save a man being the reason for him leaving the post and Patti feels even more sympathy. Nevertheless, during the journey they have a fight when she starts panicking and demanding water and Rat beats her. He tries to enforce his rules on the ship and others ask him to brake, Patti hurts herself during Rat's manoeuvres between the meteorites but she stands it. ",
"Rat and Patti Gray first meet when Rat is being yelled at by Roberds. They exchange short glances and small smiles during this initial meeting. Patti asks for Rat’s help to get to Earth quicker instead of waiting for Roberds to take them. Rat agrees to help them readily accepts the request, quickly putting into action an escape plan. When Patti wakes up on the ship after the abrupt take off, she and Rat have a friendly conversation. Rat continuously smiles throughout the conversation and appears to be very friendly and happy to help Judith. ",
"Patti Gray is initially curious about Rat, prompting her to ask Roberds about his past. Once she asks Rat to pilot the ship, she is hesitant of him as a pilot. The two of them eventually converse once the ship takes off. They discuss the illness that Gladney and Judith are suffering from. She is curious about Rat's name, but he does not tell her because it is too long. He is also helpful, instructing Gray to keep the wool blanket on to preserve body heat and keep out the cold. Even when she swings a boot at him, he takes her to the water faucet and explains why the water is so hot. However, despite being helpful, Rat is quite rough towards Gray too. When she rolls along the deck and has a breakdown about not being able to keep up, he throws a handful of water into her face. He then kicks her to get up too. When he points out Earth to them, she is extremely grateful towards him for getting them to the planet so fast. Rat and Patti Gray do not share a very personal relationship. However, she learns more about him throughout their trip, and the two of them support each other in their own ways. \n",
"Patti Gray is wary of Rat and his history. She first asks Roberds and the Chief about Rat's name, and learns the story of Rat and his betrayal during the Sansan massacre. Despite being aware of this, Patti still reaches out to Rat and asks him to pilot the ship to Earth, at the request of Judith. Patti, being unknowledgeable of piloting ships, must listen to Rat's orders reluctantly. However, she still asks him about his life and eventually his side of the story at the massacre. Patti Gray becomes increasingly frustrated with Rat due to the conditions on the ship, particularly with the water supply. She maintains a respectful relationship with Rat despite her suspicions remaining."
] |
62212
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PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
|
What happens to Patti Gray throughout the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prison Planet by Wilson Tucker.
Relevant chunks:
PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
Question:
What happens to Patti Gray throughout the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story starts with Patti looking after the sick girl. She hears the dispute of the crew about the future steps and gets involved. She learns out about Rat's past and the mistake of leaving his post which led to a massacre. Nevertheless, she and the girl decide to ask him to pilot the ship, hoping it will help the sick get on Earth in time. Patti gets sympathetic towards Rat from the beginning and keeps trying to talk to him. She keeps being by Judith. Rat bring her to the hammocks on his wings and she is frightened for a second. She follows his orders and advices until her suffering gets intense. During the trip with Rat as a pilot she has to drink only twice a day to keep water and she feels extremely thirsty. She also hurts herself when the ship suddenly moves from one side to another. Water tastes like fuel to her and she gets mad at Rat for not naming the amount of days. Then she learns about Rat's point of view on the past situation with the massacre and becomes even more sympathetic towards him. ",
"Patti Gray is in a room listening to an argument when she hears Judith moaning from a different room and goes to tend to her aid. After attending to Judith she goes back to talk to Roberds. She informs Patti that Rat went AWOL during a very important battle. The Chief Consul explains that unrelated politics is what saved Rat from execution for abandoning his post. After her inquiry about Rat, Patti says goodnight to everyone and returns to her room for the night. Patti secretly converses with Rat and asks him to fly Judith and her to Earth right away instead of waiting for Roberds. Rat agrees to do so and flies Judith to the ship. After Rat grabs and takes Judith to the ship, Patti anxiously awaits for him to return. He eventually returns and flies her to the ship too. When they get to the ship Patti reassures Judith that there is no use in mulling over the decision to take the ship now and tries to calm her down. \n\nBecause Rat pilots the ship to a very fast takeoff, Patti, Judith, and Gladney pass out due to the forces. Patti eventually wakes up and is surprised to find out how long she was out, she then begins to talk to Rat. During the trip, Patti becomes thirsty because of the very limited supply of water and she becomes irritated when Rat tells her she cannot drink more water. She grows increasingly upset about the conditions on the ship. When informed by Gladney that Rat is traveling at an excessive speed without necessary breaking, Patti tells Rat that he needs to explain how he is going to deaccelerate. She’s interrupted when they suddenly spot Earth. She goes to get Rat water as requested but returns to tell him that there is no more water left. \n",
"Throughout the story, Patti Gray is forced to endure many of the harsh conditions on the ship while having to take care of her patients. She initially mentions that she was once part of the Fleet and is used to harsh conditions. However, Nurse Gray is also never able to sleep more than three hours due to her patients and having to constantly check up on their conditions whenever they are in pain. Although Nurse Gray is determined and confident to see Judith get better, there are also parts where she begins to lose her sanity. She is upset that there is only one tank of boiling hot water and the difficulty of getting into a hammock in space. Later, as their journey reaches the end, Nurse Gray begins to go mad from the horrid conditions on the ship and falls face-first onto the floor. Once the end is near, and with some support from Rat, she is extremely happy to see Earth again. Nurse Gray is also able to calm down and resume asking Rat questions. ",
"Patti Gray is a nurse to Judith on Mars. She updates Peterson and the Chief on Judith's status, and asks them about Rat and why he is not allowed to pilot the ship to Earth. Patti learns that Rat was involved in treason back when the Sansan massacre happened. Later that night, Patti finds Rat and asks him to pilot the ship to Earth as soon as possible. Rat later retrieves Judith and Patti and takes them aboard the ship, where they take off. Rat and Patti talk on the ship, asking each other questions, and Patti faces several hardships on the ship, including the lack of water and the uncomfortable temperature. As the journey continues, it becomes unbearable for Patti."
] |
62212
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PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
|
What is the relationship between Judith and Patti Gray?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prison Planet by Wilson Tucker.
Relevant chunks:
PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
Question:
What is the relationship between Judith and Patti Gray?
Answer:
|
[
"Patti Gray is Judith's nurse, governess, guard and everything of that kind. Judith is only seventeen and they are pretty close with Patti. The least watches over the sick, reports her condition and fulfills the girl's request like asking Rat to pilot the ship. Judith relies on her nurse, she calls for her when in pain and tells her how sorry she is for causing trouble. Judith's call makes Patti get up even when she herself is in pain. She is anxious for the girl not making it to the hospital. The two stick together as they crashed together after an attack on their spaceship and have to return to Earth together. ",
"Patti is implied to have a caring role over Judith, such as a governess that can also be seen as a nurse or protector. Patti is helping take care of Judith as she is currently ill. She worries a great deal about Judith’s health and is doing everything possible to try to get her to help faster. They were previously on a ship together but it crashed. The trip was meant to be a vacation trip and the cruiser ship was owned by Judith’s father. Patti takes on a caring role for Judith as she tries to reassure her that the decision they made to leave early has been done. ",
"Judith and Patti Gray share a caring relationship. Patti Gray is a combination guard, nurse, and governess to the seventeen year old girl. Nurse Gray cares for Judith for most of the trip and constantly checks up on her to make sure her condition is not worse than it already is. The two of them are very close as well. When Judith feels guilty about the foolish stunt she causes and the consequences she faces, Gray tells her that it is not her fault because others have also experienced the same. Even though she could have chosen to stay until Roberds piloted the ship, she agreed to ask Rat to pilot the ship because of Judith’s choice of which pilot she wants to fly her. This action shows that she is very considerate of Judith’s opinions and wants.",
"Patti Gray is a maternal figure of sorts to Judith. She accompanies her on her trip to Mars, and when Judith becomes ill, Patti becomes her caretaker, aided by her nursing skills. Patti Gray looks after Judith, staying by her side throughout the night and then joining her on the ship when Rat comes to retrieve them. Judith is young, only seventeen, and because of this looks to Patti when she is ill, calling for her several times on the ship."
] |
62212
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PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
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What is the importance of the crashing of the ship of Judith's father?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Prison Planet by Wilson Tucker.
Relevant chunks:
PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
Question:
What is the importance of the crashing of the ship of Judith's father?
Answer:
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[
"The crashing of the ship brings Judith and Patti to Mars where they meet two miners and then the whole crew of the spaceship including Rat. Judith wouldn't get that sick and lose the means to return to Earth if the ship didn't crash. The miners wouldn't suffer after helping the girls. Therefore, Judith wouldn't learn the lesson of breaking the law and leaving Earth. The crashing also leads to the necessity of Rat piloting the ship and all the party suffering from heat and thirst. The whole situation of danger and limitless occurs because the ship crashed and the girl gets sick on Mars, so she needs to get to Earth immediately. ",
"The ship crashed because Judith was piloting the ship and began to experience the symptoms of her appendicitis. It is unknown whether Judith’s father survived the crash. It is implied that the man that Rat helped in the desert is perhaps Judith’s father. Rat helping that man is what caused him to be declared AWOL and why he might have authorities after him for his failure to report to duty. If the ship had not crashed then Judith’s father would not have been alone and injured in the desert, and Rat would not have been AWOL trying to help the man. ",
"The crashing of the ship of Judith’s father is what sets up the story. Nurse Gray explains that Judith took her father’s cruiser as a pleasure jaunt and came over. Although the ship is supposed to be large and easy to handle, the journey ended after Judith lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The ship's crashing is what leads her to be on Mars, and it is also the cause of her illness because she has not gone through the same mill that the men who live and work there have gone through. This past event also sets up the current events of Rat speed-driving the ship back to Earth to save her life. ",
"Judith's father's ship crashing leaves Judith and Patti Gray stranded on Mars. She initially wanted to recklessly travel to Mars, Gray coming along with her, and used her father's ship because it was easy to navigate. However, she was soon attacked by space-appendicitis and lost control of the ship, causing it to crash. This is significant because Judith and Patti Gray no longer have a way home, with Judith's illness becoming worse. They are desperate to return to Earth and thus resort to taking the ship with Rat as their pilot. "
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62212
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PRISON PLANET
By BOB TUCKER
To remain on Mars meant death from agonizing space-sickness, but Earth-surgery lay days of flight away. And there was only a surface rocket in which to escape—with a traitorous Ganymedean for its pilot.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Fall 1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Listen, Rat!" Roberds said, "what I say goes around here. It doesn't happen to be any of your business. I'm still in possession of my wits, and I know Peterson can't handle that ship. Furthermore Gladney will be in it too, right along side of that sick girl in there! And Rat, get this: I'm going to pilot that ship. Understand? Consulate or no Consulate, job or no job, I'm wheeling that crate to Earth because this is an emergency. And the emergency happens to be bigger than my position, to me at any rate." His tone dropped to a deadly softness.
"Now will you kindly remove your stinking carcass from this office?"
Unheeding, Rat swung his eyes around in the gloom and discovered the woman, a nurse in uniform. He blinked at her and she returned the look, wavering. She bit her lip and determination flowed back. She met the stare of his boring, off-colored eyes. Rat grinned suddenly. Nurse Gray almost smiled back, stopped before the others could see it.
"Won't go!" The Centaurian resumed his fight. "You not go, lose job, black-listed. Never get another. Look at me. I know." He retreated a precious step to escape a rolled up fist. "Little ship carry four nice. Rip out lockers and bunks. Swing hammocks. Put fuel in water tanks. Live on concentrates. Earth hospital fix bellyache afterwards, allright. I pilot ship. Yes?"
"No!" Roberds screamed.
Almost in answer, a moan issued from a small side room. The men in the office froze as Nurse Gray ran across the room. She disappeared through the narrow door.
"Peterson," the field manager ordered, "come over here and help me throw this rat out...." He went for Rat. Peterson swung up out of his chair with balled fist. The outlander backed rapidly.
"No need, no need, no need!" he said quickly. "I go." Still backing, he blindly kicked at the door and stepped into the night.
When the door slammed shut Roberds locked it. Peterson slumped in the chair.
"Do you mean that, Chief? About taking the ship yourself?"
"True enough." Roberds cast an anxious glance at the partly closed door, lowered his voice. "It'll cost me my job, but that girl in there has to be taken to a hospital quickly! And it's her luck to be landed on a planet that doesn't boast even one! So it's Earth ... or she dies. I'd feel a lot better too if we could get Gladney to a hospital, I'm not too confident of that patching job." He pulled a pipe from a jacket pocket. "So, might as well kill two birds with one stone ... and that wasn't meant to be funny!"
Peterson said nothing, sat watching the door.
"Rat has the right idea," Roberds continued, "but I had already thought of it. About the bunks and lockers. Greaseball has been out there all night tearing them out. We just might be able to hop by dawn ... and hell of a long, grinding hop it will be!"
The nurse came out of the door.
"How is she?" Roberds asked.
"Sleeping," Gray whispered. "But sinking...."
"We can take off at dawn, I think." He filled the pipe and didn't look at her. "You'll have to spend most of the trip in a hammock."
"I can take it." Suddenly she smiled, wanly. "I was with the Fleet. How long will it take?"
"Eight days, in that ship."
Roberds lit his pipe, and carefully hid his emotions. He knew Peterson was harboring the same thoughts. Eight days in space, in a small ship meant for two, and built for planetary surface flights. Eight days in that untrustworthy crate, hurtling to save the lives of that girl and Gladney.
"Who was that ... man? The one you put out?" Gray asked.
"We call him Rat," Roberds said.
She didn't ask why. She said: "Why couldn't he pilot the ship, I mean? What is his record?"
Peterson opened his mouth.
"Shut up, Peterson!" the Chief snapped. "We don't talk about his record around here, Miss Gray. It's not a pretty thing to tell."
"Stow it, Chief," said Peterson. "Miss Gray is no pantywaist." He turned to the nurse. "Ever hear of the Sansan massacre?"
Patti Gray paled. "Yes," she whispered. "Was Rat in that?"
Roberds shook his head. "He didn't take part in it. But Rat was attached to a very important office at the time, the outpost watch. And when Mad Barry Sansan and his gang of thugs swooped down on the Ganymedean colony, there was no warning. Our friend Rat was AWOL.
"As to who he is ... well, just one of those freaks from up around Centauria somewhere. He's been hanging around all the fields and dumps on Mars a long time, finally landed up here."
"But," protested Miss Gray, "I don't understand? I always thought that leaving one's post under such circumstances meant execution."
The Chief Consul nodded. "It does, usually. But this was a freak case. It would take hours to explain. However, I'll just sum it up in one word: politics. Politics, with which Rat had no connection saved him."
The girl shook her head, more in sympathy than condemnation.
"Are you expecting the others in soon?" she asked. "It wouldn't be right to leave Peterson."
"They will be in, in a day or two. Peterson will beat it over to Base station for repairs, and to notify Earth we're coming. He'll be all right."
Abruptly she stood up. "Goodnight gentlemen. Call me if I'm needed."
Roberds nodded acknowledgement. The door to the side room closed behind her. Peterson hauled his chair over to the desk. He sniffed the air.
"Damned rat!" he whispered harshly. "They ought to make a law forcing him to wear dark glasses!"
Roberds smiled wearily. "His eyes do get a man, don't they?"
"I'd like to burn 'em out!" Peterson snarled.
Rat helped Greaseball fill the water tanks to capacity with fuel, checked the concentrated rations and grunted.
Greaseball looked over the interior and chuckled. "The boss said strip her, and strip her I did. All right, Rat, outside." He followed the Centaurian out, and pulled the ladder away from the lip of the lock. The two walked across the strip of sandy soil to the office building. On tiptoes, Greaseball poked his head through the door panel. "All set."
Roberds nodded at him. "Stick with it!" and jerked a thumb at Rat outside. Grease nodded understanding.
"Okay, Rat, you can go to bed now." He dropped the ladder against the wall and sat on it. "Good night." He watched Rat walk slowly away.
Swinging down the path towards his own rambling shack, Rat caught a sibilant whisper. Pausing, undecided, he heard it again.
"Here ... can you see me?" A white clad arm waved in the gloom. Rat regarded the arm in the window. Another impatient gesture, and he stepped to the sill.
"Yes?"—in the softest of whispers. The voices of the men in droning conversation drifted in. "What you want?"
Nothing but silence for a few hanging seconds, and then: "Can you pilot that ship?" Her voice was shaky.
He didn't answer, stared at her confused. He felt her fear as clearly as he detected it in her words.
"Well, can you?" she demanded.
"Damn yes!" he stated simply. "It now necessary?"
"Very! She is becoming worse. I'm afraid to wait until daylight. And ... well, we want you to pilot it! She refuses to risk Mr. Roberds' job. She favors you."
Rat stepped back, astonished. "She?"
Nurse Gray moved from the window and Rat saw the second form in the room, a slight, quiet figure on a small cot. "My patient," Nurse Gray explained. "She overheard our conversation awhile ago. Quick, please, can you?"
Rat looked at her and then at the girl on the cot. He vanished from the window. Almost immediately, he was back again.
"When?" he whispered.
"As soon as possible. Yes. Do you know...?" but he had gone again. Nurse Gray found herself addressing blackness. On the point of turning, she saw him back again.
"Blankets," he instructed. "Wrap in blankets. Cold—hot too. Wrap good!" And he was gone again. Gray blinked away the illusion he disappeared upwards.
She ran over to the girl. "Judith, if you want to back down, now is the time. He'll be back in a moment."
"No!" Judith moaned. "No!" Gray smiled in the darkness and began wrapping the blankets around her. A light tapping at the window announced the return of Rat. The nurse pushed open the window wide, saw him out there with arms upstretched.
"Grit your teeth and hold on! Here we go." She picked up the blanketed girl in both arms and walked to the window. Rat took the girl easily as she was swung out, the blackness hid them both. But he appeared again instantly.
"Better lock window," he cautioned. "Stall, if Boss call. Back soon...." and he was gone.
To Nurse Gray the fifteen minute wait seemed like hours, impatient agonizing hours of tight-lipped anxiety.
Feet first, she swung through the window, clutching a small bag in her hands. She never touched ground. Rat whispered "Hold tight!" in her ear and the wind was abruptly yanked from her! The ground fell away in a dizzy rush, unseen but felt, in the night! Her feet scraped on some projection, and she felt herself being lifted still higher. Wind returned to her throat, and she breathed again.
"I'm sorry," she managed to get out, gaspingly. "I wasn't expecting that. I had forgotten you—"
"—had wings," he finished and chuckled. "So likewise Greaseball." The pale office lights dropped away as they sped over the field. On the far horizon, a tinge of dawn crept along the uneven terrain.
"Oh, the bag!" she gasped. "I've dropped it."
He chuckled again. "Have got. You scare, I catch."
She didn't see the ship because of the wind in her eyes, but without warning she plummeted down and her feet jarred on the lip of the lock.
"Inside. No noise, no light. Easy." But in spite of his warning she tripped in the darkness. He helped her from the floor and guided her to the hammocks.
"Judith?" she asked.
"Here. Beside you, trussed up so tight I can hardly breathe."
"No talk!" Rat insisted. "Much hush-hush needed. Other girl shipshape. You make likewise." Forcibly he shoved her into a hammock. "Wrap up tight. Straps tight. When we go, we go fast. Bang!" And he left her.
"Hey! Where are you going now?"
"To get Gladney. He sick too. Hush hush!" His voice floated back.
"Where has he gone?" Judith called.
"Back for another man. Remember the two miners who found us when we crashed? The burly one fell off a rock-bank as they were bringing us in. Stove in his ribs pretty badly. The other has a broken arm ... happened once while you were out. They wouldn't let me say anything for fear of worrying you."
The girl did not answer then and a hushed expectancy fell over the ship. Somewhere aft a small motor was running. Wind whistled past the open lock.
"I've caused plenty of trouble haven't I?" she asked aloud, finally.
"This was certainly a fool stunt, and I'm guilty of a lot of fool stunts! I just didn't realize until now the why of that law."
"Don't talk so much," the nurse admonished. "A lot of people have found out the why of that law the hard way, just as you are doing, and lived to remember it. Until hospitals are built on this forlorn world, humans like you who haven't been properly conditioned will have to stay right at home."
"How about these men that live and work here?"
"They never get here until they've been through the mill first. Adenoids, appendix', all the extra parts they can get along without."
"Well," Judith said. "I've certainly learned my lesson!"
Gray didn't answer, but from out of the darkness surrounding her came a sound remarkably resembling a snort.
"Gray?" Judith asked fearfully.
"Yes?"
"Hasn't the pilot been gone an awfully long time?"
Rat himself provided the answer by alighting at the lip with a jar that shook the ship. He was breathing heavily and lugging something in his arms. The burden groaned.
"Gladney!" Nurse Gray exclaimed.
"I got." Rat confirmed. "Yes, Gladney. Damn heavy, Gladney."
"But how?" she demanded. "What of Roberds and Peterson?"
"Trick," he sniggered. "I burn down my shack. Boss run out. I run in. Very simple." He packed Gladney into the remaining hammock and snapped buckles.
"And Peterson?" she prompted.
"Oh yes. Peterson. So sorry about Peterson. Had to fan him."
" Fan him? I don't understand."
"Fan. With chair. Everything all right. I apologized." Rat finished up and was walking back to the lock. They heard a slight rustling of wings as he padded away.
He was back instantly, duplicating his feat of a short time ago. Cursing shouts were slung on the night air, and the deadly spang of bullets bounced on the hull! Some entered the lock. The Centaurian snapped it shut. Chunks of lead continued to pound the ship. Rat leaped for the pilot's chair, heavily, a wing drooping.
"You've been hurt!" Gray cried. A small panel light outlined his features. She tried to struggle up.
"Lie still! We go. Boss get wise." With lightning fingers he flicked several switches on the panel, turned to her. "Hold belly. Zoom!"
Gray folded her hands across her stomach and closed her eyes.
Rat unlocked the master level and shoved!
"Whew!" Nurse Gray came back to throbbing awareness, the all too familiar feeling of a misplaced stomach attempting to force its crowded way into her boots plaguing her. Rockets roared in the rear. She loosened a few straps and twisted over. Judith was still out, her face tensed in pain. Gray bit her lip and twisted the other way. The Centaurian was grinning at her.
"Do you always leave in a hurry?" she demanded, and instantly wished she hadn't said it. He gave no outward sign.
"Long-time sleep," he announced. "Four, five hours maybe." The chest strap was lying loose at his side.
"That long!" she was incredulous. "I'm never out more than three hours!" Unloosening more straps, she sat up, glanced at the control panel.
"Not taking time," he stated simply and pointed to a dial. Gray shook her head and looked at the others.
"That isn't doing either of them any good!"
Rat nodded unhappily. "What's her matter—?" pointing.
"Appendix. Something about this atmosphere sends it haywire. The thing itself isn't diseased, but it starts manufacturing poison. Patient dies in a week unless it is taken out."
"Don't know it," he said briefly.
"Do you mean to say you don't have an appendix?" she demanded.
Rat folded his arms and considered this. "Don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. Where's it hurt?"
Gray pointed out the location. The Centaurian considered this further and drifted into long contemplation. Watching him, Gray remembered his eyes that night ... only last night ... in the office. Peterson had refused to meet them. After awhile Rat came out of it.
"No," he waved. "No appendix. Never nowhere appendix."
"Then Mother Nature has finally woke up!" she exclaimed. "But why do Centaurians rate it exclusively?"
Rat ignored this and asked one of her. "What you and her doing up there?" He pointed back and up, to where Mars obliterated the stars.
"You might call it a pleasure jaunt. She's only seventeen. We came over in a cruiser belonging to her father; it was rather large and easy to handle. But the cruise ended when she lost control of the ship because of an attack of space-appendicitis. The rest you know."
"So you?"
"So I'm a combination nurse, governess, guard and what have you. Or will be until we get back. After this, I'll probably be looking for work." She shivered.
"Cold?" he inquired concernedly.
"On the contrary, I'm too warm." She started to remove the blanket. Rat threw up a hand to stop her.
"Leave on! Hot out here."
"But I'm too hot now. I want to take it off!"
"No. Leave on. Wool blanket. Keep in body heat, yes. Keep out cold, yes. Keep in, keep out, likewise. See?"
Gray stared at him. "I never thought of it that way before. Why of course! If it protects from one temperature, it will protect from another. Isn't it silly of me not to know that?" Heat pressing on her face accented the fact.
"What is your name?" she asked. "Your real one I mean."
He grinned. "Big. You couldn't say it. Sound like Christmas and bottlenose together real fast. Just say Rat. Everybody does." His eyes swept the panel and flashed back to her. "Your name Gray. Have a front name?"
"Patti."
"Pretty, Patti."
"No, just Patti. Say, what's the matter with the cooling system?"
"Damn punk," he said. "This crate for surface work. No space. Cooling system groan, damn punk. Won't keep cool here."
"And ..." she followed up, "it will get warmer as we go out?"
Rat turned back to his board in a brown study and carefully ignored her. Gray grasped an inkling of what the coming week could bring.
"But how about water?" she demanded next. "Is there enough?"
He faced about. "For her—" nodding to Judith, "and him—" to Gladney,
"yes. Sparingly. Four hours every time, maybe." Back to Gray. "You, me ... twice a day. Too bad." His eyes drifted aft to the tank of water. She followed. "One tank water. All the rest fuel. Too bad, too bad. We get thirsty I think."
They did get thirsty, soon. A damnable hot thirst accented by the knowledge that water was precious, a thirst increased by a dried-up-in-the-mouth sensation. Their first drink was strangely bitter; tragically disappointing. Patti Gray suddenly swung upright in the hammock and kicked her legs. She massaged her throat with a nervous hand, wiped damp hair from about her face.
"I have to have a drink."
Rat stared at her without answer.
"I said, I have to have a drink!"
"Heard you."
"Well...?"
"Well, nothing. Stall. Keep water longer."
She swung a vicious boot and missed by inches. Rat grinned, and made his way aft, hand over hand. He treaded cautiously along the deck. "Do like this," he called over his shoulder. "Gravity punk too. Back and under, gravity." He waited until she joined him at the water tap.
They stood there glaring idiotically at each other.
She burst out laughing. "They even threw the drinking cups out!" Rat inched the handle grudgingly and she applied lips to the faucet.
"Faugh!" Gray sprang back, forgot herself and lost her balance, sat down on the deck and spat out the water. "It's hot! It tastes like hell and it's hot! It must be fuel!"
Rat applied his lips to the tap and sampled. Coming up with a mouthful he swished it around on his tongue like mouthwash. Abruptly he contrived a facial contortion between a grin and a grimace, and let some of the water trickle from the edges of his mouth. He swallowed and it cost him something.
"No. I mean yes, I think. Water, no doubt. Yes. Fuel out, water in. Swish-swush. Dammit, Greaseball forget to wash tank!"
"But what makes it so hot?" She worked her mouth to dry-rinse the taste of the fuel.
"Ship get hot. Water on sun side. H-m-m-m-m-m-m."
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m-m what?"
"Flip-flop." He could talk with his hands as well. "Hot side over like pancake." Rat hobbled over to the board and sat down. An experimental flick on a lever produced nothing. Another flick, this time followed by a quivering jar. He contemplated the panel board while fastening his belt.
"H-m-m-m-m-m-m," the lower lip protruded.
Gray protested. "Oh, stop humming and do something! That wa—" the word was queerly torn from her throat, and a scream magically filled the vacancy. Nurse Gray sat up and rubbed a painful spot that had suddenly appeared on her arm. She found her nose bleeding and another new, swelling bruise on the side of her head. Around her the place was empty. Bare.
No, not quite. A wispy something was hanging just out of sight in the corner of the eye; the water tap was now moulded upward , beads glistening on its handle. The wispy thing caught her attention again and she looked up.
Two people, tightly wrapped and bound in hammocks, were staring down at her, amazed, swinging on their stomachs. Craning further, she saw Rat. He was hanging upside down in the chair, grinning at her in reverse.
"Flip-flop," he laconically explained.
"For cripes sakes, Jehosaphat!" Gladney groaned. "Turn me over on my back! Do something!" Gray stood on tiptoes and just could pivot the hammocks on their rope-axis.
"And now, please, just how do I get into mine?" she bit at Rat.
Existence dragged. Paradoxically, time dropped away like a cloak as the sense of individual hours and minutes vanished, and into its place crept a slow-torturing substitute. As the ship revolved, monotonously, first the ceiling and then the floor took on dullish, maddening aspects, eyes ached continuously from staring at them time and again without surcease. The steady, drumming rockets crashed into the mind and the walls shrieked malevolently on the eyeballs. Dull, throbbing sameness of the poorly filtered air, a growing taint in the nostrils. Damp warm skin, reeking blankets. The taste of fuel in the mouth for refreshment. Slowly mounting mental duress. And above all the drumming of the rockets.
Once, a sudden, frightening change of pitch in the rockets and a wild, sickening lurch. Meteor rain. Maddening, plunging swings to the far right and left, made without warning. A torn lip as a sudden lurch tears the faucet from her mouth. A shattered tooth.
"Sorry!" Rat whispered.
"Shut up and drive!" she cried.
"Patti ..." Judith called out, in pain.
Peace of mind followed peace of body into a forgotten limbo of lost things, a slyly climbing madness directed at one another. Waspish words uttered in pain, fatigue and temper. Fractiousness. A hot, confined, stale hell. Sleep became a hollow mockery, as bad water and concentrated tablets brought on stomach pains to plague them. Consciousness punctured only by spasms of lethargy, shared to some extent by the invalids. Above all, crawling lassitude and incalescent tempers.
Rat watched the white, drawn face swing in the hammock beside him. And his hands never faltered on the controls.
Never a slackening of the terrific pace; abnormal speed, gruelling drive ... drive ... drive. Fear. Tantalizing fear made worse because Rat couldn't understand. Smothered moaning that ate at his nerves. Grim-faced, sleep-wracked, belted to the chair, driving!
"How many days? How many days!" Gray begged of him thousands of times until the very repetition grated on her eardrums. "How many days?" His only answer was an inhuman snarl, and the cruel blazing of those inhuman eyes.
She fell face first to the floor. "I can't keep it up!" she cried. The sound of her voice rolled along the hot steel deck. "I cant! I cant!"
A double handful of tepid water was thrown in her face. "Get up!" Rat stood over her, face twisted, his body hunched. "Get up!" She stared at him, dazed. He kicked her. "Get up!" The tepid water ran off her face and far away she heard Judith calling.... She forced herself up. Rat was back in the chair.
Gladney unexpectedly exploded. He had been awake for a long time, watching Rat at the board. Wrenching loose a chest strap he attempted to sit up.
"Rat! Damn you Rat, listen to me! When're you going to start braking , Rat?"
"I hear you." He turned on Gladney with dulled eyes. "Lie down. You sick."
"I'll be damned if I'm going to lie here and let you drive us to Orion! We must be near the half-way line! When are you going to start braking?"
"Not brake," Rat answered sullenly. "No, not brake."
" Not brake? " Gladney screamed and sat bolt upright. Nurse Gray jumped for him. "Are you crazy, you skinny rat?" Gray secured a hold on his shoulders and forced him down. "You gotta brake! Don't you understand that? You have to, you vacuum-skull!" Gray was pleading with him to shut-up like a good fellow. He appealed to her. "He's gotta brake! Make him!"
"He has a good point there, Rat," she spoke up. "What about this half-way line?"
He turned to her with a weary ghost of the old smile on his face. "We passed line. Three days ago, maybe." A shrug of shoulders.
"Passed!" Gray and Gladney exclaimed in unison.
"You catch on quick," Rat nodded. "This six day, don't you know?"
Gladney sank back, exhausted. The nurse crept over to the pilot.
"Getting your figures mixed, aren't you?"
Rat shook his head and said nothing.
"But Roberds said eight days, and he—"
"—he on Mars. I here. Boss nuts, too sad. He drive, it be eight days. Now only six." He cast a glance at Judith and found her eyes closed.
"Six days, no brake. No."
"I see your point, and appreciate it," Gray cut in. "But now what? This deceleration business ... there is a whole lot I don't know, but some things I do!"
Rat refused the expected answer. "Land tonight, I think. Never been to Earth before. Somebody meet us, I think."
"You can bet your leather boots somebody will meet us!" Gladney cried. Gray turned to him. "The Chief'll have the whole planet waiting for you !" He laughed with real satisfaction. "Oh yes, Rat, they'll be somebody waiting for us all right." And then he added: "If we land."
"Oh, we land." Rat confided, glad to share a secret.
"Yeah," Gladney grated. "But in how many little pieces?"
"I've never been to Earth before. Nice, I think." Patti Gray caught something new in the tone and stared at him. Gladney must have noticed it, too.
The Centaurian moved sideways and pointed. Gray placed her eyes in the vacated position.
"Earth!" she shouted.
"Quite. Nice. Do me a favor?"
"Just name it!"
"Not drink long time. Some water?"
Gray nodded and went to the faucet. The drumming seemed remote, the tension vanished. She was an uncommonly long time in returning, at last she appeared beside him, outstretched hands dry.
"There isn't any left, Rat."
Rat batted his tired eyes expressively. "Tasted punk," he grinned at her.
She sat down on the floor suddenly and buried her face.
"Rat," she said presently, "I want to ask you something, rather personal? Your ... name. 'Rat'? Roberds told me something about your record. But ... please tell me, Rat. You didn't know the attack was coming, did you?"
He grinned again and waggled his head at her. "No. Who tell Rat?" Suddenly he was deadly serious as he spoke to her. "Rat a.w.o.l., go out to help sick man alone in desert. Rat leave post. Not time send call through. Come back with man, find horrible thing happen."
"But why didn't you explain?"
He grinned again. "Who believe? Sick man die soon after."
Gladney sat up. He had heard the conversation between the two. "You're right, Rat. No one would have believed you then, and no one will now. You've been safe enough on Mars, but the police will nab you as soon as you get out of the ship."
"They can't!" cried Patti Gray. "They can't hurt him after what he's done now."
The Centaurian grinned in a cynical way.
"Police not get me, Gladney. Gladney's memory damn punk, I think. Earth pretty nice place, maybe. But not for Rat."
Gladney stared at him for minutes. Then: "Say, I get it ... you're—"
"Shut up!" Rat cut him off sharply. "You talk too much." He cast a glance at Nurse Gray and then threw a meaning look at Gladney.
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What are some odd things that happened in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Girls From Earth by Frank M. Robinson.
Relevant chunks:
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
Question:
What are some odd things that happened in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Phyllis Hanson has been wanting a husband and a family for almost three years. She does not think that the bridge games and benefits and lectures can replace a husband and family. However, in her mail today, she gets a poster that tells her to come to the colonies. This is clearly a violation of her privacy. However, the man on the poster is very handsome, and she looks at it again and again. Though she admires the man on the poster, she still writes a letter reporting it. Then Ruby Johnson also goes through something strange. She steals a beautiful gown from the store and then gets caught. She knows that she will simply face a small fine along with a few weeks or months in detention because she was caught stealing dress from the . However, to her surprised, she is told that she be charged with a 10,000 dollar fine along with ten years in prison, or she can choose to go to a colony planet and get a five-hundred-dollar bonus. She is shocked, but chooses the latter. Similarly, Suzanne is given a similar choice between shipping out to the colony or going to jail after receiving a phone call telling her to get to a specific place. She also chooses the colony planet. ",
"MacDonald notes that because of the higher population of women on Earth than men, a lot stricter laws have been enacted. An example includes a prohibition of alcohol from being used in everyday items such as cough medicines and hair tonics. In addition, there are laws against violating a women’s privacy and a purity related moral code. An example of a privacy violation is when a woman asks Phyllis Hanson about her plans for the night. ",
"One of the odd things that happen in the story is the whole process of pairing up a husband and wife. The system is based on numbers as first impressions; although this seems to be an efficient way, Karl notices that there is almost no time for him and his future wife to get acquainted with one another. This is rather odd because many of them want to marry for love, yet the system caters to an arranged marriage rather than a natural relationship. Hill even brings up trading women if they are not satisfied with who they get.\n\nAnother odd occurrence in the story is how both men and women do not want to emigrate to the colonies. There are clearly more men in the colonies, yet many choose to stay on Earth because more women are there. None of the women want to go either; if they decide to leave Earth to colonize, it will be the same as giving up their luxurious, modern civilization to fight disease. \n",
"There are many odd things that happen in the story. The story itself is quite odd in form. It jumps from different times in one linear storyline, beginning at the end, and ending towards the beginning. It is also quite odd that the two men on the colonised planet think that women should be subservient, and that if you start to treat a woman with kindness and respect, and not as a servant, she will end up being spoiled. Another interesting part of the story is the nondescript place which Suzanne Carstens walks to. We are not really informed as to whether or not Ms Carstens is a prostitute, although it is insinuated. \n"
] |
51268
|
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
|
What is the setting of the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Girls From Earth by Frank M. Robinson.
Relevant chunks:
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
Question:
What is the setting of the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The story first sets next to the river on Midplanet. The road connecting the river to the Landing City goes from forest to grassland, multiple small trails connects to the large one, leading towards the city. The Landing City is not really that big, especially comparing to Altair. The battered shack and headquarters building appears as they reach the Landing City. There is a grassy lot next to the landing field. The landing field is decorated with bunting and welcome signs. There is a table with government pamphlets as well as tables for luncheon food. \n\nInside Mr. Eescher’s room, there is an intercom switch, some seats, and on his desk, there was also a drawer. Phyllis’ in an office that has a typewriter which is put inside a drawer. There is a washroom along with a mirror where she notices her worry lines. She owns a small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, in the bathroom there’s a mirror. She is on the sofa reading a book when she throws it across the room. There’s also a mail slot where she finds the odd poster. Rudy is in shop, and there’s a dress laying on the counter. In a courtroom in the detention building, there’s a judge and he has a ledger with him. Suzanne’s apartment has needle shower with perfume dispenser, build-in soft-drink bar in the library, as well as all-communications set and electrical massager. There is also a telephone, and her bedroom has a hat box. She arrives at a brownstone office building, there’s a buzzer and a then a young man appears in the doorway. There are bright lights inside the room, and there was a battery of chairs against one side of the room where the girls are sitting. ",
"The story begins with Karl and Joseph working with water and trying to tie logs together. Karl describes the ground as being thick with shadows. When they finish their work, they walk on a trail through a forest towards Landing City. Landing City is described as having rusting, steel shacks with muddy streets. When they get to Landing City, they begin to line up on the landing field that is decorated with welcome signs in anticipation for the wife draft that is going to begin soon. There are tables on the landing field filled with informational pamphlets and food. \n\nWhen the story goes to Phyllis Hanson it details her leaving work and going to her apartment. Her apartment is a small two-room p[lace. \n\nRuby’s Johnson story begins at a clothing store. She is soon taken to a court for trial after she is caught stealing. \n\nSuzanne’s story is originally set at her apartment. After receiving a call, she leaves and walks to a nearby brownstone that looks like an office building. Once in the brownstone, she is instructed to sit in a room filled with chairs where other women that she recognizes are sitting. \n",
"The story begins near Landing City on Altair. There is a river in the thick forest where Hill and Karl work, while their tiny yllumphs nibble on grass in a nearby grove of trees. Landing City is a smudge of corrugated steel shacks that are rusting, muddy streets, and a small rocket port of thirty acres fenced off with barbed wire. Even the main office and headquarter is a dirty shack. The grassy field beside the landing port is decorated with huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table with luncheon food has also been set up. \n\nPhyllis Hansen has a typewriter on her desk and correspondence drawer at the office she works at. There is also a washroom for the ladies' to do their makeup. Her home is a two-room bachelor girl apartment, with a bathroom. The bathroom has a mirror and a shower. There is also a kitchen area to cook, a sink to do the dishes, books, and a sofa to sit on. There is a mail slot to receive mail in too. \n\nRuby Johnson's story takes place in a department store with many counters, including a lingerie one that a man and woman are in. There is also a counter from which Ruby takes the dress. Later, she is sent to the detention center and the courtroom. \n\nFinally, Suzanne Carsten's 'rented' apartment has the latest conveniences, such as a needle shower and perfume dispenser. There is also a built-in soft drink bar in the library, an all-communications set, and an electrical massager. The building that she goes to later is a brownstone one, resembling more of an office building than anything else. Inside, there is a battery of chairs on one side, where many other women are seated. ",
"The story is set in many different places. The story begins on the newly colonised planet, where Karl and Joseph are in a river. They haul themselves out and make their way to the ramshackle city of the area. It is muddy and the buildings are mostly makeshift huts. \nMr. Macdonald and Mr. Escher discuss their issue in the office building of the colonisation board.\nPhyllis Hanson walks home after taking a trip to the bathroom in her office. At home, she goes into the kitchen to make dinner, gets ready for bed in the bathroom and finally curls up on the sofa to read a book. \nRuby Johnson movies from a brightly lit department store, to a courtroom in her part of the story. \nSuzanne begins her story in her comfortable apartment. It has a needle shoer that sprays perfume, a built-in soft drink bar, a library, an all communications set and a massage chair. She then walks the streets to an unusual brownstone office building, where she is taken inside, to a brightly lit room. "
] |
51268
|
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
|
What leads Escher and MacDonald’s meeting in the story?
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Girls From Earth by Frank M. Robinson.
Relevant chunks:
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
Question:
What leads Escher and MacDonald’s meeting in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"They are meeting because currently, there are not as many females on the colonized planets. And this is a huge problem. From the beginning of the colonization, there were more adventuresome males than females, thus they headed for the new world but most of the females stayed behind. The disproportional rate in the genders that gone to colonies lead to five females for every three males on Earth, while the colonies have the opposite. Hence, those girls needs to be shipped from their original planet, in this case the Earth, to colony planets for those males there. However, not many girls are applying to go. Another problem, states MacDonald, is the number of men applying for emigration to colonized planets have been dropping. MacDonald considers this reasonable since it seems illogical for a male to move away from a place that has more females than males. Escher then disregards the qualification for colonization and decides to focus on making the people that don’t want to colonize to colonize, whether it is through convincing or forcing. ",
"MacDonald and Escher meet because the Colonization Board has given MacDonald a blank check to get Escher to fix the gender ratio problem. The Colonization Board is worried about the effects that the gender ratio is having on Earth and the great psychological implications that it presents. They are concerned because it is also becoming more difficult to convince men to colonize planets because they do not want to leave Earth where they are easily favored by women due to their rarity. They have a greater advantage on Earth with their pick of women who cannot be easy picky with their choices. ",
"Escher and MacDonald meet to discuss the problems on Earth and how to encourage more people to immigrate to the colonies. They go over the concerning ratio between the two genders on Earth as a result of the colonization problem. Many of the men were initially eager to go into the stars, but the women did not follow as quickly. Many of the women are husbandless too, and men are refusing to emigrate to the colonies because there are so many women on Earth. Furthermore, the women who have grown husbandless have made the societies more puritanical than ever. The Colonization Board is looking for a solution to this problem, which leads MacDonald and Escher to meet. ",
"Escher and MacDonald meet to discuss how to get women to come to the newly colonised planets. When the planets were first colonised, more men than women went, as they had more sense of adventure, and women didn't want to leave the luxury of Earth to go live on a makeshift farm on a muddy planet. The men on these colonised planets need wives however, and they have been given the task of finding a way to get these women on Earth over to these new planets. They try to think of a solution, and come up with one that is in a very much legal, and moral grey area. They decide to give every woman who commits a petty crime a very serious ultimatum. They can either spend ten years in jail and pay a fine of ten thousand dollars, or they can go to these colonises and get a five hundred dollar bonus. "
] |
51268
|
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
|
Describe the different expectations about women
|
After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about The Girls From Earth by Frank M. Robinson.
Relevant chunks:
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
Question:
Describe the different expectations about women
Answer:
|
[
"First, Joe takes some furs that could help cover the girl, and Joe hopes that she will appreciate it. However, Hill believes that they should give less to the girls. Because the less you give, the less they will expect, and if they are spoiled, the men has to do all the farming and family raising yourself, which is all that they have to do. Joe thought of the girl as somebody he can talk to, somebody that can help him with the farm. Hill suggests for his wife to have a garden, but Karl doesn’t think she will have the time for a garden. However, it is important to note that the girls were considered as objects since Karl and Joe mentions trading them. In particular, Earthwomen are expected to be beautiful, sophisticated, glamorous, and hardworking. Moreover, Escher is thinking about persuading and forcing the girls to colonize while forgetting about the moral codes. The governments seems to expect the women without husbands to be satisfied with bridge games and benefits and lectures. ",
"The few women that were on the colonized planet where Karl and Joseph lived were expected to cook the food that was being served as part of the welcoming party for the wife draft. On Earth, the expectations for women are to find a husband. Phyliss is 30 years old and details her frustration with not being married at her age, complaining that nothing else can fill the emptiness that she feels from not having a husband. ",
"In the story, the women are expected to find husbands. This is especially apparent on Earth, where locking down a man has become an intense competition because of the five to three ratio between women and men. Furthermore, the Earthwomen are expected to be more sophisticated, cultured, prettier, and glamorous than the colonial women. These women are also expected to fulfill the traditional roles of raising families, helping colonize the planet, and supporting their husbands with whatever they need help with. The decision to send the women to the colonies is also made by men. On the other hand, women are expected to just follow along and accept the offer if they want any chance of landing a husband at all. \n",
"There are many expectations for women both on the colonised worlds, and on Earth. On Earth, women are expected to behave in a polite, civilised manner. They are also lucky to get a man of any kind, with women outnumbering men 5 to 3, so they are expected to take what they can get. Women on the colonised worlds are expected to obey their husbands, and take care of all tasks related to life on their farms. This includes: working the farms, and raising the families. \n"
] |
51268
|
THE GIRLS FROM EARTH
By FRANK M. ROBINSON
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1952. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Problem: How can you arrange marriages with men in one solar system, women in another—and neither willing to leave his own world?
I
"The beasts aren't much help, are they?"
Karl Allen snatched a breath of air and gave another heave on the line tied to the raft of parampa logs bobbing in the middle of the river.
"No," he grunted, "they're not. They always balk at a time like this, when they can see it'll be hard work."
Joseph Hill wiped his plump face and coiled some of the rope's slack around his thick waist.
"Together now, Karl. One! Two! "
They stood knee-deep in mud on the bank, pulling and straining on the rope, while some few yards distant, in the shade of a grove of trees, their tiny yllumphs nibbled grass and watched them critically, but made no effort to come closer.
"If we're late for ship's landing, Joe, we'll get crossed off the list."
Hill puffed and wheezed and took another hitch on the rope.
"That's what I've been thinking about," he said, worried.
They took a deep breath and hauled mightily on the raft rope. The raft bobbed nearer. For a moment the swift waters of the Karazoo threatened to tear it out of their grasp, and then it was beached, most of it solidly, on the muddy bank. One end of it still lay in the gurgling, rushing waters, but that didn't matter. They'd be back in ten hours or so, long before the heavy raft could be washed free.
"How much time have we got, Karl?"
The ground was thick with shadows, and Karl cast a critical eye at them. He estimated that even with the refusal of their yllumphs to help beach the raft, they still had a good two hours before the rocket put down at Landing City.
"Two hours, maybe a little more," he stated hastily when Hill looked more worried. "Time enough to get to Landing City and put in for our numbers on the list."
He turned back to the raft, untied the leather and horn saddles, and threw them over the backs of their reluctant mounts. He cinched his saddle and tied on some robes and furs behind it.
Hill watched him curiously. "What are you taking the furs for? This isn't the trading rocket."
"I know. I thought that when we come back tonight, it might be cold and maybe she'll appreciate the coverings then."
"You never would have thought of it yourself," Hill grunted. "Grundy must have told you to do it, the old fool. If you ask me, the less you give them, the less they'll come to expect. Once you spoil them, they'll expect you to do all the trapping and the farming and the family-raising yourself."
"You didn't have to sign up," Karl pointed out. "You could have applied for a wife from some different planet."
"One's probably just as good as another. They'll all have to work the farms and raise families."
Karl laughed and aimed a friendly blow at Hill. They finished saddling up and headed into the thick forest.
It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals.
And it was time, he thought soberly, that he started to raise a family. He was mid-twenty now, old enough to want a wife and children.
"You going to raise a litter, Joe?"
Hill started. Karl realized that he had probably been thinking of the same thing.
"One of these days I'll need help around the sawmill," Hill answered defensively. "Need some kids to cut the trees, a couple more to pole them down the river, some to run the mill itself and maybe one to sell the lumber in Landing City. Can't do it all myself."
He paused a moment, thinking over something that had just occurred to him.
"I've been thinking of your plans for a garden, Karl. Maybe I ought to have one for my wife to take care of, too."
Karl chuckled. "I don't think she'll have the time!"
They left the leafy expanse of the forest and entered the grasslands that sloped toward Landing City. He could even see Landing City itself on the horizon, a smudge of rusting, corrugated steel shacks, muddy streets, and the small rocket port—a scorched thirty acres or so fenced off with barbed wire.
Karl looked out of the corner of his eye at Hill and felt a vague wave of uneasiness. Hill was a big, thick man wearing the soiled clothes and bristly stubble of a man who was used to living alone and who liked it. But once he took a wife, he would probably have to keep himself in clean clothes and shave every few days. It was even possible that the woman might object to Hill letting his yllumph share the hut.
The path was getting crowded, more of the colonists coming onto the main path from the small side trails.
Hill broke the silence first. "I wonder what they'll be like."
Karl looked wise and nodded knowingly. "They're Earthwomen, Joe. Earth! "
It was easy to act as though he had some inside information, but Karl had to admit to himself that he actually knew very little about it. He was a Second System colonist and had never even seen an Earthwoman. He had heard tales, though, and even discounting a large percentage of them, some of them must have been true. Old Grundy at the rocket office, who should know about these things if anybody did, seemed disturbingly lacking on definite information, though he had hinted broadly enough. He'd whistle softly and wink an eye and repeat the stories that Karl had already heard; but he had nothing definite to offer, no real facts at all.
Some of the other colonists whom they hadn't seen for the last few months shouted greetings, and Karl began to feel some of the carnival spirit. There was Jenkins, who had another trapping line fifty miles farther up the Karazoo; Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more.
"Joe," Karl said suddenly, "what's supposed to make women from Earth better than women from any other world?"
Hill located a faint itch and frowned. "I don't know, Karl. It's hard to say. They're—well, sophisticated, glamorous."
Karl absorbed this in silence. Those particular qualities were, he thought, rather hard to define.
The battered shack that served as rocket port office and headquarters for the colonial office on Midplanet loomed up in front of them. There was a crowd gathered in front of the building and they forced their way through to see what had caused it.
"We saw this the last time we were here," Hill said.
"I know," Karl agreed, "but I want to take another look." He was anxious to glean all the information that he could.
It was a poster of a beautiful woman leaning toward the viewer. The edges of the poster were curling and the colors had faded during the last six months, but the girl's smile seemed just as inviting as ever. She held a long-stemmed goblet in one hand and was blowing a kiss to her audience with the other. Her green eyes sparkled, her smile was provocative. A quoted sentence read: "I'm from Earth !" There was nothing more except a printed list of the different solar systems to which the colonial office was sending the women.
She was real pretty, Karl thought. A little on the thin side, maybe, and the dress she was wearing would hardly be practical on Midplanet, but she had a certain something. Glamour, maybe?
A loudspeaker blared.
"All colonists waiting for the wife draft assemble for your numbers! All colonists...."
There was a jostling for places and then they were in the rapidly moving line. Grundy, fat and important-looking, was handing out little blue slips with numbers on them, pausing every now and then to tell them some entertaining bit of information about the women. He had a great imagination, nothing else.
Karl drew the number 53 and hurried to the grassy lot beside the landing field that had been decorated with bunting and huge welcome signs for the new arrivals. A table was loaded with government pamphlets meant to be helpful to newly married colonists. Karl went over and stuffed a few in his pockets. Other tables had been set out and were loaded with luncheon food, fixed by the few colonial women in the community. Karl caught himself eyeing the women closely, wondering how the girls from Earth would compare with them.
He fingered the ticket in his pocket. What would the woman be like who had drawn the companion number 53 aboard the rocket? For when it landed, they would pair up by numbers. The method had its drawbacks, of course, but time was much too short to allow even a few days of getting acquainted. He'd have to get back to his trapping lines and he imagined that Hill would have to get back to his sawmill and the others to their farms. What the hell, you never knew what you were getting either way, till it was too late.
"Sandwich, mister? Pop?"
Karl flipped the boy a coin, picked up some food and a drink, and wandered over to the landing field with Hill. There were still ten minutes or so to go before the rocket landed, but he caught himself straining his sight at the blue sky, trying to see a telltale flicker of exhaust flame.
The field was crowded and he caught some of the buzzing conversation.
"... never knew one myself, but let me tell you...."
"... knew a fellow once who married one, never had a moment's rest afterward...."
"... no comparison with colonial women. They got culture...."
"... I'd give a lot to know the girl who's got number twenty-five...."
"Let's meet back here with the girls who have picked our numbers," Hill said. "Maybe we could trade."
Karl nodded, though privately he felt that the number system was just as good as depending on first impressions.
There was a murmur from the crowd and he found his gaze riveted overhead. High above, in the misty blue sky, was a sudden twinkle of fire.
He reached up and wiped his sweaty face with a muddy hand and brushed aside a straggly lock of tangled hair. It wouldn't hurt to try to look his best.
The twinkling fire came nearer.
II
"A Mr. Macdonald to see you, Mr. Escher."
Claude Escher flipped the intercom switch.
"Please send him right in."
That was entirely superfluous, he thought, because MacDonald would come in whether Escher wanted him to or not.
The door opened and shut with a slightly harder bang than usual and Escher mentally braced himself. He had a good hunch what the problem was going to be and why it was being thrown in their laps.
MacDonald made himself comfortable and sat there for a few minutes, just looking grim and not saying anything. Escher knew the psychology by heart. A short preliminary silence is always more effective in browbeating subordinates than an initial furious bluster.
He lit a cigarette and tried to outwait MacDonald. It wasn't easy—MacDonald had great staying powers, which was probably why he was the head of the department.
Escher gave in first. "Okay, Mac, what's the trouble? What do we have tossed in our laps now?"
"You know the one—colonization problem. You know that when we first started to colonize, quite a large percentage of the male population took to the stars, as the saying goes. The adventuresome, the gamblers, the frontier type all decided they wanted to head for other worlds, to get away from it all. The male of the species is far more adventuresome than the female; the men left—but the women didn't. At least, not in nearly the same large numbers.
"Well, you see the problem. The ratio of women to men here on Earth is now something like five to three. If you don't know what that means, ask any man with a daughter. Or any psychiatrist. Husband-hunting isn't just a pleasant pastime on Earth. It's an earnest cutthroat business and I'm not just using a literary phrase."
He threw a paper on Escher's desk. "You'll find most of the statistics about it in that, Claude. Notice the increase in crimes peculiar to women. Shoplifting, badger games, poisonings, that kind of thing. It's quite a list. You'll also notice the huge increase in petty crimes, a lot of which wouldn't have bothered the courts before. In fact, they wouldn't even have been considered crimes. You know why they are now?"
Escher shook his head blankly.
"Most of the girls in the past who didn't catch a husband," MacDonald continued, "grew up to be the type of old maid who's dedicated to improving the morals and what-not of the rest of the population. We've got more puritanical societies now than we ever had, and we have more silly little laws on the books as a result. You can be thrown in the pokey for things like violating a woman's privacy—whatever that means—and she's the one who decides whether what you say or do is a violation or not."
Escher looked bored. "Not to mention the new prohibition which forbids the use of alcohol in everything from cough medicines to hair tonics. Or the cleaned up moral code that reeks—if you'll pardon the expression—of purity. Sure, I know what you mean. And you know the solution. All we have to do is get the women to colonize."
MacDonald ran his fingers nervously through his hair.
"But it won't be easy, and that's why it's been given to us. It's your baby, Claude. Give it a lot of thought. Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. "Go back to the Board and tell them the problem is not solvable, that we can't think of anything?"
Escher looked hurt. "Did I say that? I just said it wouldn't be easy."
"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly. You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation, anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing, as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize. Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to colonize who didn't want to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all—provided you held your nose, silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was such a thing as a moral code.
III
Phyllis Hanson put the cover over her typewriter and locked the correspondence drawer. Another day was done, another evening about to begin.
She filed into the washroom with the other girls and carefully redid her face. It was getting hard to disguise the worry lines, to paint away the faint crow's-feet around her eyes.
She wasn't, she admitted to herself for the thousandth time, what you would call beautiful. She inspected herself carefully in her compact mirror. In a sudden flash of honesty, she had to admit that she wasn't even what you would call pretty. Her face was too broad, her nose a fraction too long, and her hair was dull. Not homely, exactly—but not pretty, either.
Conversation hummed around her, most of it from the little group in the corner, where the extreme few who were married sat as practically a race apart. Their advice was sought, their suggestions avidly followed.
"Going out tonight, Phyl?"
She hesitated a moment, then slowly painted on the rest of her mouth. The question was technically a privacy violator, but she thought she would sidestep it this time, instead of refusing to answer point-blank.
"I thought I'd stay home tonight. Have a few things I want to rinse out."
The black-haired girl next to her nodded sympathetically. "Sure, Phyl, I know what you mean. Just like the rest of us—waiting for the phone to ring."
Phyllis finished washing up and then left the office, carefully noting the girl who was waiting for the boss. The girl was beautiful in a hard sort of way, a platinum blonde with an entertainer's busty figure. Waiting for a plump, middle-aged man like a stagestruck kid outside a theatre.
At home, in her small two-room bachelor-girl apartment, she stripped and took a hot, sudsing shower, then stepped out and toweled herself in front of a mirror. She frowned slightly. You didn't know whether you should keep yourself in trim just on some off-chance, or give up and let yourself go.
She fixed dinner, took a moderately long time doing the dishes, and went through the standard routine of getting a book and curling up on the sofa. It was a good book of the boot-legged variety—scientifically written with enough surplus heroes and heroines and lushly described love affairs to hold anybody's interest.
It held hers for ten pages and then she threw the book across the room, getting a savage delight at the way the pages ripped and fluttered to the floor.
What was the use of kidding herself any longer, of trying to live vicariously and hoping that some day she would have a home and a husband? She was thirty now; the phone hadn't rung in the last three years. She might as well spend this evening as she had spent so many others—call up the girls for a bridge game and a little gossip, though heaven knew you always ended up envying the people you were gossiping about.
Perhaps she should have joined one of the organizations at the office that did something like that seven nights out of every seven. A bridge game or a benefit for some school or a talk on art. Or she could have joined the Lecture of the Week club, or the YWCA, or any one of the other government-sponsored clubs designed to fill the void in a woman's life.
But bridge games and benefits and lectures didn't take the place of a husband and family. She was kidding herself again.
She got up and retrieved the battered book, then went over to the mail slot. She hadn't had time to open her mail that morning; most of the time it wasn't worth the effort. Advertisements for book clubs, lecture clubs, how to win at bridge and canasta....
Her fingers sprang the metal tabs on a large envelope and she took out the contents and spread it wide.
She gasped. It was a large poster, about a yard square. A man was on it, straddling a tiny city and a small panorama of farms and forests at his feet. He was a handsome specimen, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes and a curly mat on his bare chest that was just enough to be attractive without being apelike. He held an axe in his hands and was eyeing her with a clearly inviting look of brazen self-confidence.
It was definitely a privacy violator and she should notify the authorities immediately!
Bright lettering at the top of the poster shrieked: "Come to the Colonies, the Planets of Romance!"
Whoever had mailed it should be arrested and imprisoned! Preying on....
The smaller print at the bottom was mostly full of facts and figures. The need for women out on the colony planets, the percentage of men to women—a startling disproportion—the comfortable cities that weren't nearly as primitive as people had imagined, and the recently reduced qualifications.
She caught herself admiring the man on the poster. Naturally, it was an artist's conception, but even so....
And the cities were far in advance of the frontier settlements, where you had to battle disease and dirty savages.
It was all a dream. She had never done anything like this and she wouldn't think of doing it now. And had any of her friends seen the poster? Of course, they probably wouldn't tell her even if they had.
But the poster was a violation of privacy. Whoever had sent it had taken advantage of information that was none of their business. It was up to her to notify the authorities!
She took another look at the poster.
The letter she finally finished writing was very short. She addressed it to the box number in the upper left-hand corner of the plain wrapper that the poster had come in.
IV
The dress lay on the counter, a small corner of it trailing off the edge. It was a beautiful thing, sheer sheen satin trimmed in gold nylon thread. It was the kind of gown that would make anybody who wore it look beautiful. The price was high, much too high for her to pay. She knew she would never be able to buy it.
But she didn't intend to buy it.
She looked casually around and noted that nobody was watching her. There was another woman a few counters down and a man, obviously embarrassed, at the lingerie counter. Nobody else was in sight. It was a perfect time. The clerk had left to look up a difficult item that she had purposely asked for and probably wouldn't be back for five minutes.
Time enough, at any rate.
The dress was lying loose, so she didn't have to pry it off any hangers. She took another quick look around, then hurriedly bundled it up and dropped it in her shopping bag.
She had taken two self-assured steps away from the counter when she felt a hand on her shoulder. The grip was firm and muscular and she knew she had lost the game. She also knew that she had to play it out to the end, to grasp any straw.
"Let go of me!" she ordered in a frostily offended voice.
"Sorry, miss," the man said politely, "but I think we have a short trip to take."
She thought for a moment of brazening it out further and then gave up. She'd get a few weeks or months in the local detention building, a probing into her background for the psychological reasons that prompted her to steal, and then she'd be out again.
They couldn't do anything to her that mattered.
She shrugged and followed the detective calmly. None of the shoppers had looked up. None seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary.
In the detention building she thanked her good luck that she was facing a man for the sentence, instead of one of the puritanical old biddies who served on the bench. She even found a certain satisfaction in the presence of the cigar smoke and the blunt, earthy language that floated in from the corridor.
"Why did you steal it?" the judge asked. He held up the dress, which, she noted furiously, didn't look nearly as nice as it had under the department store lights.
"I don't have anything to say," she said. "I want to see a lawyer."
She could imagine what he was thinking. Another tough one, another plain jane who was shoplifting for a thrill.
And she probably was. You had to do something nowadays. You couldn't just sit home and chew your fingernails, or run out and listen to the endless boring lectures on art and culture.
"Name?" he asked in a tired voice.
She knew the statistics he wanted. "Ruby Johnson, 32, 145 pounds, brown hair and green eyes. Prints on file."
The judge leaned down and mentioned something to the bailiff, who left and presently came back with a ledger. The judge opened it and ran his fingers down one of the pages.
The sentence would probably be the usual, she thought—six months and a fine, or perhaps a little more when they found out she had a record for shoplifting.
A stranger in the courtroom in the official linens of the government suddenly stepped up beside the judge and looked at the page. She could hear a little of what he said:
"... anxiety neurosis ... obvious feeling of not being wanted ... probably steals to attract attention ... recommend emigration."
"In view of some complicating factors, we're going to give you a choice," the judge finally said. "You can either go to the penitentiary for ten years and pay a $10,000 fine, or you can ship out to the colony planets and receive a five-hundred-dollar immigration bonus."
She thought for a minute that she hadn't heard right. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! It was obvious that the state was interested in neither the fine nor in paying her room and board for ten years. She could recognize a squeeze play when she saw it, but there was nothing she could do about it.
"I wouldn't call that a choice," she said sourly. "I'll ship out."
V
Suzanne was proud of the apartment. It had all the modern conveniences, like the needle shower with the perfume dispenser, the built-in soft-drink bar in the library, the all-communications set, and the electrical massager. It was a nice, comfortable setup, an illusion of security in an ever-changing world.
She lit a cigarette and chuckled. Mrs. Burger, the fat old landlady, thought she kept up the apartment by working as a buyer for one of the downtown stores.
Well, maybe some day she would.
But not today. And not tonight.
The phone rang and she answered in a casual tone. She talked for a minute, then let a trace of sultriness creep into her voice. The conversation wasn't long.
She let the receiver fall back on the base and went into the bedroom to get a hat box. She wouldn't need much; she'd probably be back that same night.
It was a nice night and since the address was only a few blocks away, she decided to walk it. She blithely ignored the curious stares from other pedestrians, attracted by the sharp, clicking sound of her heels on the sidewalk.
The address was a brownstone that looked more like an office building than anything else, but then you could never tell. She pressed the buzzer and waited a moment for the sound to echo back and forth on the inside. She pressed it again and a moment later a suave young man appeared in the doorway.
"Miss Carstens?"
She smiled pertly.
"We've been expecting you."
She wondered a little at the "we," but dutifully smiled and followed him in.
The glare of the lights inside the office blinded her for a moment. When she could focus them again, her smile became slightly blurry at the edges and then disappeared entirely. She wasn't alone. There was a battery of chairs against one side of the room. She recognized most of the girls sitting in them.
She forced a smile to her lips and tried to laugh.
"I'm sure there's been some mistake! Why, I never...."
The young man coughed politely. "I'm afraid there's been no mistake. Full name, please."
"Suzanne Carstens," she said grimly, and gave the other statistics he wanted. She idly wondered what stoolie had peddled the phone numbers.
"Suzanne Carstens," the young man noted, and slowly shook his head.
"A very pretty name, but no doubt not your own. It actually doesn't matter, though. Take a seat over there."
She did as he asked and he faced the entire group.
"I and the other gentlemen here represent the Colonization Board. We've interceded with the local authorities in order to offer you a choice. We would like to ship you out to the colony planets. Naturally, we will pay you the standard emigration bonus of five hundred dollars. The colonists need wives; they offer you—security."
He stressed the word slightly.
"Now, of course, if you don't prefer the colony planets, you can stay behind and face the penalties of ten years in jail and a fine of ten thousand dollars."
Suzanne felt that her lower jaw needed support. Ten thousand dollars and ten years! And in either case she'd lose the apartment she had worked so hard for, her symbol of security.
"Well, what do you say?" There was a dead silence. The young man from the Colonization Board turned to Suzanne. "How about you, Miss Carstens?"
She smiled sickly and nodded her head. "I love to travel!" she said.
It didn't sound at all witty even to herself.
|
What is the significance of the cut wire?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
Question:
What is the significance of the cut wire?
Answer:
|
[
"When the army investigates the destruction of Lupus V, it discovers that the wire to the bomb that would blow up the community had been cut. The wire was hidden 12 inches under the ground, so it would not have been easy to find. Since the wire was cut, the bomb didn’t explode, enabling the aliens to take the women and children, along with all the technology, from the planet. The purpose of the bomb was to prevent the aliens from gaining knowledge of human technology and body chemistry; presumably, aliens would be able to use this information against humans in the future. Because Dylan knows of the cut wire on Lupus V, he checks the wire for the bomb on the planet he has come to evacuate. When he discovers the wire is cut here, too, he notes that the ends are clean, so someone made the cut recently. The ground over the wire was packed down, so whoever cut it also wanted to hide that it had been tampered with. Rossel assumes one of the colonists must have cut the wire, possibly thinking it was dangerous for the colonists and just a silly government rule. After Dylan tells him about the wire being cut on Lupus V, Rossel plans to question everyone. Dylan wonders if the aliens could have cut it by telepathy of one of the colonists but rules that out because if they could control one human, they could control all of them. Dylan then wonders if an alien has done it. No one knows what the aliens look like, but for them to have intelligence, they would need a large brain, making the alien about the size of a large dog. Dylan knows all the animals on the planet had been vetted before the colony was settled. When he tells the others his suspicion, Rush says the only animal they’ve seen nearby is a viggle, which is something like a monkey with four legs. The viggle passed Biology’s screening, so the viggle is ruled out. Although Dylan doesn’t discover the alien hidden in its electric cocoon, he is convinced that aliens cut the wire. He is also convinced that the alien attack is imminent.\n",
"After the 70 colonists on Lupus V were either captured or killed, the soldiers discovered a cut wire leading to the detonator. The bombs were placed to protect human secrets, chemistry, and biology from prying alien hands. The fact that someone or something knew about the bomb and knew how to preven it from detonating suggests that the aliens are more intelligent about human life than everyone previously thought. \nWhen Captain Dylan finds the cut wire on the ice-cold colony, he realizes that they need to evacuate as quickly as possible, since this is the sign that the aliens are already here. \n",
"The wire being discussed is one which connects a detonator to a bomb mandated to be a the center of each human colony for security purposes. The bomb is intended to destroy the entire colony and all the people in it upon alien attach so that the aliens don’t learn about human technology and body chemistry.\nThe bomb on Lupus V, the first colony to be attacked, did not blow because the wire had been cut. Thus, the alien attack captured many of the humans there, potentially giving them access to their technology and biology that humans had been trying to keep secure. Similarly, the wire had been cut on the planet that Captain Dylan landed on to evacuate in the story, which he discovered by digging down to it almost a foot underground. The reader learns there is an alien hiding underground nearby controlling the attack that may have been capable of cutting the wire through something like telepathy. The significance that two wires were cut in the same way suggests that the aliens are mounting a concerted attack on many human colonies and disabling their detonators in order to gain advantages over humans by learning their secrets.\n",
"Each colony had a bomb buried in the center, which would be detonated in the event of an alien attack in order to prevent them from learning important facts about human technology and body chemistry. When the aliens attacked and destroyed Lupus V in 2360, the army investigated the remnants of the colony there; they discovered the wire that was hidden under a foot of earth and was intended to trigger the detonation had been dug up and cut, thereby preventing detonation. Dylan discovers a similar situation when he arrives at the unnamed colony of the story. When he finds the cut wire, Rossel believes it is one of the colonists lashing out against a government they do not respect. When Rush sees the wire, he agrees with Dylan that it must be some kind of telepathic alien intervention. In fact, an alien had cut the wire, presumably by deploying a box that allowed it to perform actions remotely from a subterranean control center. The cut wire provides the warning the colonists need in order to have time to evacuate before the alien attack."
] |
50848
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SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
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Who is Captain Dylan, and what happens to him?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
Question:
Who is Captain Dylan, and what happens to him?
Answer:
|
[
"Captain Dylan is in the Fleet army and travels with Lieutenant Bossio to colonies on different planets with the message that an alien attack is imminent and the colonists must evacuate. He has become a drunk, which is not uncommon in the army because soldiers were outcasts. For the past three weeks, he and Bossio have been evacuating colonies—the current one is their fifth and last. Prior to this mission, he has spent the last 30 years hanging around, getting drunk, and waiting for something to happen. He was made a captain just before this mission. Looking back, he finds it humorous that he used to study military tactics as if he would need to know them. After his father died of a hernia that he developed from working too long on a heavy planet, he joined the army. Dylan was lured by the army’s recruiting advertisements calling itself guardians of the frontier. When he enlisted, anti-war conditioning wasn’t as strong as it is now, so people weren’t as resentful and disrespectful of soldiers then. Dylan feels that along the way, after all the time he spent in bars and jails, he lost his core. He also believes it doesn’t matter whether he makes it back home: he has no connections and doesn’t owe anybody anything. Drinking has become a way of life, and while he digs for the wire to the bomb, he takes a drink, but after he finds the wire has been cut, he reaches for his bottle but for the first time in a long time, stops before taking a drink. \nWhen the colonists start looking to him for help and answers, Dylan is somewhat pleased because now they are showing him respect, but he is annoyed, too, since it is only because they are scared and need help. When Dylan learns that Planet Three hasn’t answered any radio calls, he connects that to the fact he hasn’t been able to reach Bossio and concludes that the colonists and Bossio are dead. He knows this means he will have to stay behind on the planet when the colonists leave, but that doesn’t bother him. What does bother him is that Bossio is dead only because they had come to help these people—people who wanted nothing to do with them until their lives were threatened. Bossio was his best friend, and Dylan mourns his loss. Even though Dylan resents the people for their disregard for him and the army, he has sympathy for them. He doesn’t want to watch their pain when the women have to leave their men behind, and he is touched when an old woman offers him coffee and a mackinaw to help him stay warm. As he watches Rossel and other men saying goodbye to their wives and children, Dylan begins losing the shell the last 30 years had created around him and begins to feel that these people are his people.\n",
"Captain Dylan is a member of the Earth’s army, presumably reporting back to Fleet Headquarters. His father died of a hernia when he was only 19 years old after years of hard work and grueling labor. This sudden absence left Dylan feeling alone in the world, so he happily signed on when the army came to town, speaking of frontiers to discover and great adventures to be had. However, with an anti-war sentiment spreading across the colonies, there was no real army to join. Their fleets were small and fairly untrained or, at least ill-prepared for war. When Captain Dylan finally got word of an alien attack, he feared that the anti-war thinking would hinder their ability to fight back. \nHe arrives on this cold planet to inform the colonists that they need to evacuate. Since Lupus V, he’s been to several cities and colonies over a few weeks and evacuated them all. Lietenant Bossio, his best friend, dropped him off before flying to Planet Three to evacuate the colony there too. He is dependent on alcohol both for warmth and to get him through. He is met with contempt and hostility, but he perseveres and convinces them of the danger. \nHe drinks to fight off the cold and digs beneath the ground to check the bomb. He discovers that the wire has been cut, like on Lupus V. He ponders telepathy, but is interrupted by Rossel who reveals that they don’t have enough room on their ship for all 60 inhabitants. \nDylan is a little cranky, but tries his best to problemsolve. Slowly they reach a compromise and Dylan buzzes Bossio to see when he’s coming back from Planet Three. He doesn’t hear back. Dylan eventually realizes that Bossio is not coming back, so he will be stuck on this planet while the aliens attack. \nThe story ends with Dylan watching as 46 members of the colony squeeze onto the spaceship, while he resigns himself to his doom. The rocket doesn’t start, and all are left behind. \n",
"Captain Dylan spent 30 years in the West end of space on the “outer edges of Mankind” doing patrols as a peacetime officer before finally being made a Captain. He has never fired a gun. He developed a habit of drinking alcohol, and often in the story drinks from a bottle on his hip to cope with hard news.\nHe and his Lieutenant, Bossio, were summoned out of a bar with the news of the alien attack on Lupus V and charged with clearing the colonies in danger. They cleared four colonies in three weeks, and this planet was due to be the last. \nAfter landing on the planet, he is initially met with some skepticism by the colonists, who then quickly shift into high gear to follow his instructions to evacuate. He goes about digging up the wire to the safety detonation system in the colony to check it is functioning, but it has recently been cut. He thinks it was an alien, and he turns out to be right. There is a nearby alien hiding under a tree orchestrating the attack that is never discovered by the humans.\nThe Captain sees through helping the colonists to load their ship with 46 people to escape, but on take off it is not able to lift off the ground.\n",
"Captain Jim Dylan is a tall, frail-looking army man with pale blue eyes whose appearance is not too neat. He salutes Rossel sloppily when they first meet and delivers an envelope with a message from Fleet Headquarters. After delivering the message, his ship leaves, and Rossel accompanies Dylan back to the village. When Dylan was 19, his father died of a hernia, and he joined the army; those were the days prior to the anti-war conditioning, and people viewed soldiers as \"guardians of the frontier.\" In the ensuing years of boozing, being imprisoned, receiving anti-army insults, and endlessly waiting for something to happen, Dylan had lost the thrill of action and had lost touch with himself. Prior to his deployment with Bossio to clear the colonies, the army had finally made him a captain; even that achievement feels empty to him. Dylan has mostly been drinking for the past thirty years thanks to the army's inaction and the fact that they were universally disrespected and hated by most colonists. However, he had also spent some of that time studying military tactics. Still, he realizes he has never fired a gun. Dylan halfheartedly engages with the colonists when he first arrives to warn them of the impending alien attack. But he slowly warms up to them as he realizes that they actually need his help, and he can offer them that help. He theorizes that the cut wire is the result of telepathic interference by the aliens as they preempt their attack. He works with Rossel to devise an evacuation plan, and Rush provides Dylan with sentries. Dylan is devastated when he learns of Bossio's death. Bossio had been his only friend. In spite of the fact that Bossio had died for people who hated him, Dylan finds he cannot hate the colonists. They simply don't understand that no conflict leads to decay. At the same time, he realizes he cannot truly help them either, so he retreats back to the radio shack. After an old woman brings him a mackinaw and coffee, Dylan realizes he should help after all. When he sees people removing their clothes to allow more people on board, and he witnesses Rossel tearily saying goodbye to his wife, Dylan feels a human connection he had lost in those thirty years of aimlessness."
] |
50848
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SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
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What is the significance of the army in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
Question:
What is the significance of the army in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"The army has no respect from the colonists; they don’t want anything to do with it because they associate it with war. The people at this time have been conditioned to despise war and anything to do with it. When they see Captain Dylan standing by his ship and facing the village, they think he is ridiculous or possibly drunk. Rossel noticed that Dylan appeared like a typical soldier: not very neat and not very clean, and his salute lacked proper military precision. And when Lt. Bossio tosses Dylan a bottle of liquor, Rossel isn’t surprised because of the reputation soldiers have for being drunks; in fact, Rossel is disgusted by the liquor and Bossio’s drunkenness. When aliens attacked Lupus V in 2360, the army found the destruction and dead and discovered why their security bomb hadn’t detonated. There was little the army could do about the alien attack because the army had become so small and weak. There had been peace for 500 years when people didn’t need the army, so its equipment was old, and many of the soldiers were from the bottom of society: drinkers and gamblers. So the army is just notifying other colonies of the attack and warning them to evacuate. When the colonists learn that they have to evacuate due to the threat of an alien attack, Rossel demands that the fleet defend them, and another man named Rush asks where the army fleet is, expecting it to come to their defense. When Dylan explains there is no fleet, just a few hundred obsolete ships, he is tempted to tell them that no one wants an army until it is needed. Dylan himself has been in the army for 30 years and has never seen any action. And when Rossel realizes the colony’s ship won’t hold all of the colonists, he asks if any fleet ships are within radio distance that they could summon to help with their evacuation, hoping that the army is near enough to be of help. Ironically, the army that they despise now offers their only hope. ",
"After 500 years of peace, few saw the reason for maintaing or keeping an army intact. With anti-war and peace sentiments running abound, those that served were looked down upon, since they were paying for their seemingly worthless service. However, when the aliens attack, suddenly the long-forgotten fleets were called into action, and the drunken soldiers were called to arms. After the years of inactivity and depleted funding, the army is not what it once was and is having trouble containing the alien threat. \nThe army is both the saviour and ultimate enemy in this story, as they could offer protection, but simply don’t have the means to do so. \n",
"The army is significantly smaller than it once was due to humans having a loathing of war and thus, reducing the size of the Fleet over time. Humans have had 500 years of peace and anti-war conditioning, that have led to the army becoming “small, weak and without respect.” The army could do nothing but warn colonists of attack.\nIronically, the colonists question Captain Dylan why the Fleet isn’t coming to their rescue, to which he describes the Fleet barely exists and now only has a “few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born.” In this way, the army is significant in the story because it is not wanted by many, but it comes to be called on for help anyways in their time of need.\nCaptain Dylan has worked for thirty years as a peacetime soldier and thinks to himself that peace-loving nations in the history of Earth never stay strong, but does not go on to labor the point to the colonists. He feels deeply sad that his only friend, Bossio, was already dead from trying to help these people that didn’t support the army, and that he too would soon have the same fate. Captain Dylan shakes off this mentality and in the end feels that he can’t hate the colonists for wanting peace because it is a noble thing for trying to achieve.\n",
"The people of the village have been taught over the years to hate war, and as a result, they also hate soldiers. They suspect every soldier they meet is a drunk, which Captain Dylan appears to confirm when he catches a bottle tossed to him by an associate upon first arriving at the village. Later, Dylan recalls the thirty years of his army career, which has largely been spent drinking and getting into trouble. Due to hundreds of years of anti-war conditioning, the army is under-resourced, understaffed, and underfunded. In fact, there are only a few hundred ships left that are mostly obsolete and a handful of army leadership and government jobs available. However, when the aliens attack, the army deploys Dylan and Bossio to help warn and evacuate as many colonies as possible, which they do to little fanfare. In fact, Bossio dies in the effort, and it appears that Dylan might as well."
] |
50848
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SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
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Describe the setting of the story.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Soldier Boy by Michael Shaara.
Relevant chunks:
SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
Question:
Describe the setting of the story.
Answer:
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[
"The story takes place on an unnamed planet some time after an alien attack in the year 2360. Colonists settled the planet and have built a village consisting of several houses and a radio shack. Presumably, this is where the colonists contact other colonies. It is also where the detonator for the security bomb is located, with the wire buried under 12 inches of dirt. The atmosphere is Earth-like. There are thick clouds overnight, and the morning is misty and cold. The breeze carries the smell of snow, and later in the day, the snow arrives. The planet is suitable for agriculture because the colonists have already harvested their warmer weather crops and planted their winter crops. The colonists have advanced technology because they have machines that plant and harvest and automatically run their factories. The temperature is below freezing, so people are staying in their houses and drinking coffee. A sister planet colony on Planet Three is much like this colony. The two colonies maintain contact via radios, and mailships make regular runs between the settlements on the different planets. Every settlement is equipped with a security bomb to be detonated in the event of an alien attack. The purpose of discharging the bomb is to prevent hostile aliens from learning important information about humans, including their technology and body chemistry.\n\nAnother setting mentioned in the story is the Lupus V colony attacked by aliens late in the year 2360. Lupus V had 70 registered colonists, including men, women, and children. It also had technical equipment, radios, guns, machines, and books. When the army arrived after the alien attack, everything had been taken, along with 39 women and children; 31 people died in the attack or the subsequent fire that the aliens set with their heat ray. The security bomb had not been detonated because the wire to it had been cut, even though it was buried 12 inches under the soil.\n",
"Soldier Boy by Michael Straaha takes place on a very cold and icy planet. Captain Dylan waited in the cold for a long time before Rossel arrived, forcing tears to his eyes. The colonists of this planet are reluctant to leave their beds and have especially thick and warm clothing designed for the cold. The planet was colonized less than a century ago by these pioneers. This process involves setting up plastic houses, sending machines out to the fields to plant crops and fertilize the soil, and factories to transform dirt into coffee. \nAs far as we know, there is only one other alien on this planet: the viggle. This creature is fairly similar to an Earth monkey. With four legs and a slightly mischievous personality, they mostly stay out of the way of the colonists. There are also lizards and trees, showcased by the fact that the Alien is living in the hollow of one. \n",
"Late in the year 2360, humans have expanded from Earth to colonizing other planets. The colonists are considered pioneers that inflate plastic houses on arrival that harden up. Then they release machines to plant and harvest, and use technology to transmute dirt into coffee (coffee being an important motif in the story for the comfort of home). \nThe unnamed planet that Captain Dylan lands on is in wintertime, bitterly cold, with snow falling often in the story and piling up high enough to cover footprints. The colonists stay inside for the winter, and so his arrival is startling as he stands in a cold field. Captain Dylan is invited into the homes of the colonists as they prepare to evacuate and also digs near the central bomb in the colony to find the cut wire that disabled the security system that would obliterate the colony upon alien attack to preserve human secrets. There is a small ridge around the colony that sentinels can be posted on.\nThe colonists have a “seed of peace” deeply planted in them and have been taught to hate war and despise soldiers. Because of this, there is little support for the army and their numbers have dwindled to the point where they can’t fight off alien attacks. Ironically, the people in this colony are desperate for the Fleet to intervene to save them, but the Captain delivers the news that there is no Fleet to do so.\n",
"The story begins at the start of winter following the planting of the winter crops as an icy breeze blows in, smelling of snow. There is a village where the colonists live and a nearby field where the army ship lands. Bushes, trees, and hills can be seen through the snow. Thick clouds gather in the north at night, and in the morning, it is misty and cold. The colony is home to sixty colonists, and they have a sister colony called Planet Three. They have one ship with one deck that can fit forty people and a radio shack used to communicate with other colonies, specifically Planet Three. The colonists sometimes kill a local animal called a viggle for being pesky; a viggle looks like a monkey with four legs. Every colony has been equipped with a bomb buried at the city center that can be triggered by detonation device with a wire attached to it. The alien that has cut this wire makes its control center in a wide, warm room under the base of a tree, where he lies wrapped in a thick, electric cocoon. He has a large box with several knobs with which he controls the timing of the assault on the village and disables the colonists' ship. He also has a chronometer he uses to check the time."
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50848
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SOLDIER BOY
By MICHAEL SHAARA
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction July 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It's one thing to laugh at a man because his job is useless and outdated—another to depend on him when it suddenly isn't.
In the northland, deep, and in a great cave, by an everburning fire the Warrior sleeps. For this is the resting time, the time of peace, and so shall it be for a thousand years. And yet we shall summon him again, my children, when we are sore in need, and out of the north he will come, and again and again, each time we call, out of the dark and the cold, with the fire in his hands, he will come.
— Scandinavian legend
Throughout the night, thick clouds had been piling in the north; in the morning, it was misty and cold. By eight o'clock a wet, heavy, snow-smelling breeze had begun to set in, and because the crops were all down and the winter planting done, the colonists brewed hot coffee and remained inside. The wind blew steadily, icily from the north. It was well below freezing when, some time after nine, an army ship landed in a field near the settlement.
There was still time. There were some last brief moments in which the colonists could act and feel as they had always done. They therefore grumbled in annoyance. They wanted no soldiers here. The few who had convenient windows stared out with distaste and a mild curiosity, but no one went out to greet them.
After a while a rather tall, frail-looking man came out of the ship and stood upon the hard ground looking toward the village. He remained there, waiting stiffly, his face turned from the wind. It was a silly thing to do. He was obviously not coming in, either out of pride or just plain orneriness.
"Well, I never," a nice lady said.
"What's he just standing there for?" another lady said.
And all of them thought: well, God knows what's in the mind of a soldier, and right away many people concluded that he must be drunk. The seed of peace was deeply planted in these people, in the children and the women, very, very deep. And because they had been taught, oh so carefully, to hate war they had also been taught, quite incidentally, to despise soldiers.
The lone man kept standing in the freezing wind.
Eventually, because even a soldier can look small and cold and pathetic, Bob Rossel had to get up out of a nice, warm bed and go out in that miserable cold to meet him.
The soldier saluted. Like most soldiers, he was not too neat and not too clean and the salute was sloppy. Although he was bigger than Rossel he did not seem bigger. And, because of the cold, there were tears gathering in the ends of his eyes.
"Captain Dylan, sir." His voice was low and did not carry. "I have a message from Fleet Headquarters. Are you in charge here?"
Rossel, a small sober man, grunted. "Nobody's in charge here. If you want a spokesman I guess I'll do. What's up?"
The captain regarded him briefly out of pale blue, expressionless eyes. Then he pulled an envelope from an inside pocket, handed it to Rossel. It was a thick, official-looking thing and Rossel hefted it idly. He was about to ask again what was it all about when the airlock of the hovering ship swung open creakily. A beefy, black-haired young man appeared unsteadily in the doorway, called to Dylan.
"C'n I go now, Jim?"
Dylan turned and nodded.
"Be back for you tonight," the young man called, and then, grinning, he yelled "Catch" and tossed down a bottle. The captain caught it and put it unconcernedly into his pocket while Rossel stared in disgust. A moment later the airlock closed and the ship prepared to lift.
"Was he drunk ?" Rossel began angrily. "Was that a bottle of liquor ?"
The soldier was looking at him calmly, coldly. He indicated the envelope in Rossel's hand. "You'd better read that and get moving. We haven't much time."
He turned and walked toward the buildings and Rossel had to follow. As Rossel drew near the walls the watchers could see his lips moving but could not hear him. Just then the ship lifted and they turned to watch that, and followed it upward, red spark-tailed, into the gray spongy clouds and the cold.
After a while the ship went out of sight, and nobody ever saw it again.
The first contact Man had ever had with an intelligent alien race occurred out on the perimeter in a small quiet place a long way from home. Late in the year 2360—the exact date remains unknown—an alien force attacked and destroyed the colony at Lupus V. The wreckage and the dead were found by a mailship which flashed off screaming for the army.
When the army came it found this: Of the seventy registered colonists, thirty-one were dead. The rest, including some women and children, were missing. All technical equipment, all radios, guns, machines, even books, were also missing. The buildings had been burned, so were the bodies. Apparently the aliens had a heat ray. What else they had, nobody knew. After a few days of walking around in the ash, one soldier finally stumbled on something.
For security reasons, there was a detonator in one of the main buildings. In case of enemy attack, Security had provided a bomb to be buried in the center of each colony, because it was important to blow a whole village to hell and gone rather than let a hostile alien learn vital facts about human technology and body chemistry. There was a bomb at Lupus V too, and though it had been detonated it had not blown. The detonating wire had been cut.
In the heart of the camp, hidden from view under twelve inches of earth, the wire had been dug up and cut.
The army could not understand it and had no time to try. After five hundred years of peace and anti-war conditioning the army was small, weak and without respect. Therefore, the army did nothing but spread the news, and Man began to fall back.
In a thickening, hastening stream he came back from the hard-won stars, blowing up his homes behind him, stunned and cursing. Most of the colonists got out in time. A few, the farthest and loneliest, died in fire before the army ships could reach them. And the men in those ships, drinkers and gamblers and veterans of nothing, the dregs of a society which had grown beyond them, were for a long while the only defense Earth had.
This was the message Captain Dylan had brought, come out from Earth with a bottle on his hip.
An obscenely cheerful expression upon his gaunt, not too well shaven face, Captain Dylan perched himself upon the edge of a table and listened, one long booted leg swinging idly. One by one the colonists were beginning to understand. War is huge and comes with great suddenness and always without reason, and there is inevitably a wait, between acts, between the news and the motion, the fear and the rage.
Dylan waited. These people were taking it well, much better than those in the cities had taken it. But then, these were pioneers. Dylan grinned. Pioneers. Before you settle a planet you boil it and bake it and purge it of all possible disease. Then you step down gingerly and inflate your plastic houses, which harden and become warm and impregnable; and send your machines out to plant and harvest; and set up automatic factories to transmute dirt into coffee; and, without ever having lifted a finger, you have braved the wilderness, hewed a home out of the living rock and become a pioneer. Dylan grinned again. But at least this was better than the wailing of the cities.
This Dylan thought, although he was himself no fighter, no man at all by any standards. This he thought because he was a soldier and an outcast; to every drunken man the fall of the sober is a happy thing. He stirred restlessly.
By this time the colonists had begun to realize that there wasn't much to say, and a tall, handsome woman was murmuring distractedly: "Lupus, Lupus—doesn't that mean wolves or something?"
Dylan began to wish they would get moving, these pioneers. It was very possible that the aliens would be here soon, and there was no need for discussion. There was only one thing to do and that was to clear the hell out, quickly and without argument. They began to see it.
But, when the fear had died down, the resentment came. A number of women began to cluster around Dylan and complain, working up their anger. Dylan said nothing. Then the man Rossel pushed forward and confronted him, speaking with a vast annoyance.
"See here, soldier, this is our planet. I mean to say, this is our home . We demand some protection from the fleet. By God, we've been paying the freight for you boys all these years and it's high time you earned your keep. We demand...."
It went on and on while Dylan looked at the clock and waited. He hoped that he could end this quickly. A big gloomy man was in front of him now and giving him that name of ancient contempt, "soldier boy." The gloomy man wanted to know where the fleet was.
"There is no fleet. There are a few hundred half-shot old tubs that were obsolete before you were born. There are four or five new jobs for the brass and the government. That's all the fleet there is."
Dylan wanted to go on about that, to remind them that nobody had wanted the army, that the fleet had grown smaller and smaller ... but this was not the time. It was ten-thirty already and the damned aliens might be coming in right now for all he knew, and all they did was talk. He had realized a long time ago that no peace-loving nation in the history of Earth had ever kept itself strong, and although peace was a noble dream, it was ended now and it was time to move.
"We'd better get going," he finally said, and there was quiet.
"Lieutenant Bossio has gone on to your sister colony at Planet Three of this system. He'll return to pick me up by nightfall and I'm instructed to have you gone by then."
For a long moment they waited, and then one man abruptly walked off and the rest followed quickly; in a moment they were all gone. One or two stopped long enough to complain about the fleet, and the big gloomy man said he wanted guns, that's all, and there wouldn't nobody get him off his planet. When he left, Dylan breathed with relief and went out to check the bomb, grateful for the action.
Most of it had to be done in the open. He found a metal bar in the radio shack and began chopping at the frozen ground, following the wire. It was the first thing he had done with his hands in weeks, and it felt fine.
Dylan had been called up out of a bar—he and Bossio—and told what had happened, and in three weeks now they had cleared four colonies. This would be the last, and the tension here was beginning to get to him. After thirty years of hanging around and playing like the town drunk, a man could not be expected to rush out and plug the breach, just like that. It would take time.
He rested, sweating, took a pull from the bottle on his hip.
Before they sent him out on this trip they had made him a captain. Well, that was nice. After thirty years he was a captain. For thirty years he had bummed all over the west end of space, had scraped his way along the outer edges of Mankind, had waited and dozed and patrolled and got drunk, waiting always for something to happen. There were a lot of ways to pass the time while you waited for something to happen, and he had done them all.
Once he had even studied military tactics.
He could not help smiling at that, even now. Damn it, he'd been green. But he'd been only nineteen when his father died—of a hernia, of a crazy fool thing like a hernia that killed him just because he'd worked too long on a heavy planet—and in those days the anti-war conditioning out on the Rim was not very strong. They talked a lot about guardians of the frontier, and they got him and some other kids and a broken-down doctor. And ... now he was a captain.
He bent his back savagely, digging at the ground. You wait and you wait and the edge goes off. This thing he had waited for all those damn days was upon him now and there was nothing he could do but say the hell with it and go home. Somewhere along the line, in some dark corner of the bars or the jails, in one of the million soul-murdering insults which are reserved especially for peacetime soldiers, he had lost the core of himself, and it didn't particularly matter. That was the point: it made no particular difference if he never got it back. He owed nobody. He was tugging at the wire and trying to think of something pleasant from the old days, when the wire came loose in his hands.
Although he had been, in his cynical way, expecting it, for a moment it threw him and he just stared. The end was clean and bright. The wire had just been cut.
Dylan sat for a long while by the radio shack, holding the ends in his hands. He reached almost automatically for the bottle on his hip and then, for the first time he could remember, let it go. This was real, there was no time for that.
When Rossel came up, Dylan was still sitting. Rossel was so excited he did not notice the wire.
"Listen, soldier, how many people can your ship take?"
Dylan looked at him vaguely. "She sleeps two and won't take off with more'n ten. Why?"
His eyes bright and worried, Rossel leaned heavily against the shack.
"We're overloaded. There are sixty of us and our ship will only take forty. We came out in groups, we never thought...."
Dylan dropped his eyes, swearing silently. "You're sure? No baggage, no iron rations; you couldn't get ten more on?"
"Not a chance. She's only a little ship with one deck—she's all we could afford."
Dylan whistled. He had begun to feel light-headed. "It 'pears that somebody's gonna find out first hand what them aliens look like."
It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "All right," he said quickly, still staring at the clear-sliced wire, "we'll do what we can. Maybe the colony on Three has room. I'll call Bossio and ask."
The colonist had begun to look quite pitifully at the buildings around him and the scurrying people.
"Aren't there any fleet ships within radio distance?"
Dylan shook his head. "The fleet's spread out kind of thin nowadays." Because the other was leaning on him he felt a great irritation, but he said, as kindly as he could, "We'll get 'em all out. One way or another, we won't leave anybody."
It was then that Rossel saw the wire. Thickly, he asked what had happened.
Dylan showed him the two clean ends. "Somebody dug it up, cut it, then buried it again and packed it down real nice."
"The damn fool!" Rossel exploded.
"Who?"
"Why, one of ... of us, of course. I know nobody ever liked sitting on a live bomb like this, but I never...."
"You think one of your people did it?"
Rossel stared at him. "Isn't that obvious?"
"Why?"
"Well, they probably thought it was too dangerous, and silly too, like most government rules. Or maybe one of the kids...."
It was then that Dylan told him about the wire on Lupus V. Rossel was silent. Involuntarily, he glanced at the sky, then he said shakily,
"Maybe an animal?"
Dylan shook his head. "No animal did that. Wouldn't have buried it, or found it in the first place. Heck of a coincidence, don't you think? The wire at Lupus was cut just before an alien attack, and now this one is cut too—newly cut."
The colonist put one hand to his mouth, his eyes wide and white.
"So something," said Dylan, "knew enough about this camp to know that a bomb was buried here and also to know why it was here. And that something didn't want the camp destroyed and so came right into the center of the camp, traced the wire, dug it up and cut it. And then walked right out again."
"Listen," said Rossel, "I'd better go ask."
He started away but Dylan caught his arm.
"Tell them to arm," he said, "and try not to scare hell out of them. I'll be with you as soon as I've spliced this wire."
Rossel nodded and went off, running. Dylan knelt with the metal in his hands.
He began to feel that, by God, he was getting cold. He realized that he'd better go inside soon, but the wire had to be spliced. That was perhaps the most important thing he could do now, splice the wire.
All right, he asked himself for the thousandth time, who cut it? How? Telepathy? Could they somehow control one of us?
No. If they controlled one, then they could control all, and then there would be no need for an attack. But you don't know, you don't really know.
Were they small? Little animals?
Unlikely. Biology said that really intelligent life required a sizable brain and you would have to expect an alien to be at least as large as a dog. And every form of life on this planet had been screened long before a colony had been allowed in. If any new animals had suddenly shown up, Rossel would certainly know about it.
He would ask Rossel. He would damn sure have to ask Rossel.
He finished splicing the wire and tucked it into the ground. Then he straightened up and, before he went into the radio shack, he pulled out his pistol. He checked it, primed it, and tried to remember the last time he had fired it. He never had—he never had fired a gun.
The snow began falling near noon. There was nothing anybody could do but stand in the silence and watch it come down in a white rushing wall, and watch the trees and the hills drown in the whiteness, until there was nothing on the planet but the buildings and a few warm lights and the snow.
By one o'clock the visibility was down to zero and Dylan decided to try to contact Bossio again and tell him to hurry. But Bossio still didn't answer. Dylan stared long and thoughtfully out the window through the snow at the gray shrouded shapes of bushes and trees which were beginning to become horrifying. It must be that Bossio was still drunk—maybe sleeping it off before making planetfall on Three. Dylan held no grudge. Bossio was a kid and alone. It took a special kind of guts to take a ship out into space alone, when Things could be waiting....
A young girl, pink and lovely in a thick fur jacket, came into the shack and told him breathlessly that her father, Mr. Rush, would like to know if he wanted sentries posted. Dylan hadn't thought about it but he said yes right away, beginning to feel both pleased and irritated at the same time, because now they were coming to him.
He pushed out into the cold and went to find Rossel. With the snow it was bad enough, but if they were still here when the sun went down they wouldn't have a chance. Most of the men were out stripping down their ship and that would take a while. He wondered why Rossel hadn't yet put a call through to Three, asking about room on the ship there. The only answer he could find was that Rossel knew that there was no room, and he wanted to put off the answer as long as possible. And, in a way, you could not blame him.
Rossel was in his cabin with the big, gloomy man—who turned out to be Rush, the one who had asked about sentries. Rush was methodically cleaning an old hunting rifle. Rossel was surprisingly full of hope.
"Listen, there's a mail ship due in, been due since yesterday. We might get the rest of the folks out on that."
Dylan shrugged. "Don't count on it."
"But they have a contract!"
The soldier grinned.
The big man, Rush, was paying no attention. Quite suddenly he said:
"Who cut that wire, Cap?"
Dylan swung slowly to look at him. "As far as I can figure, an alien cut it."
Rush shook his head. "No. Ain't been no aliens near this camp, and no peculiar animals either. We got a planet-wide radar, and ain't no unidentified ships come near, not since we first landed more'n a year ago." He lifted the rifle and peered through the bore. "Uh-uh. One of us did it."
The man had been thinking. And he knew the planet.
"Telepathy?" asked Dylan.
"Might be."
"Can't see it. You people live too close, you'd notice right away if one of you wasn't ... himself. And, if they've got one, why not all?"
Rush calmly—at least outwardly calmly—lit his pipe. There was a strength in this man that Dylan had missed before.
"Don't know," he said gruffly. "But these are aliens, mister. And until I know different I'm keepin' an eye on my neighbor."
He gave Rossel a sour look and Rossel stared back, uncomprehending.
Then Rossel jumped. "My God!"
Dylan moved to quiet him. "Look, is there any animal at all that ever comes near here that's as large as a dog?"
After a pause, Rush answered. "Yep, there's one. The viggle. It's like a reg'lar monkey but with four legs. Biology cleared 'em before we landed. We shoot one now and then when they get pesky." He rose slowly, the rifle held under his arm. "I b'lieve we might just as well go post them sentries."
Dylan wanted to go on with this but there was nothing much else to say. Rossel went with them as far as the radio shack, with a strained expression on his face, to put through that call to Three.
When he was gone Rush asked Dylan, "Where you want them sentries? I got Walt Halloran and Web Eggers and six others lined up."
Dylan stopped and looked around grimly at the circling wall of snow.
"You know the site better than I do. Post 'em in a ring, on rises, within calling distance. Have 'em check with each other every five minutes. I'll go help your people at the ship."
The gloomy man nodded and fluffed up his collar. "Nice day for huntin'," he said, and then he was gone with the snow quickly covering his footprints.
The Alien lay wrapped in a thick electric cocoon, buried in a wide warm room beneath the base of a tree. The tree served him as antennae; curiously he gazed into a small view-screen and watched the humans come. He saw them fan out, eight of them, and sink down in the snow. He saw that they were armed.
He pulsed thoughtfully, extending a part of himself to absorb a spiced lizard. Since the morning, when the new ship had come, he had been watching steadily, and now it was apparent that the humans were aware of their danger. Undoubtedly they were preparing to leave.
That was unfortunate. The attack was not scheduled until late that night and he could not, of course, press the assault by day. But flexibility , he reminded himself sternly, is the first principle of absorption , and therefore he moved to alter his plans. A projection reached out to dial several knobs on a large box before him, and the hour of assault was moved forward to dusk. A glance at the chronometer told him that it was already well into the night on Planet Three, and that the attack there had probably begun.
The Alien felt the first tenuous pulsing of anticipation. He lay quietly, watching the small square lights of windows against the snow, thanking the Unexplainable that matters had been so devised that he would not have to venture out into that miserable cold.
Presently an alarming thought struck him. These humans moved with uncommon speed for intelligent creatures. Even without devices, it was distinctly possible that they could be gone before nightfall. He could take no chance, of course. He spun more dials and pressed a single button, and lay back again comfortably, warmly, to watch the disabling of the colonists' ship.
When Three did not answer, Rossel was nervously gazing at the snow, thinking of other things, and he called again. Several moments later the realization of what was happening struck him like a blow. Three had never once failed to answer. All they had to do when they heard the signal buzz was go into the radio shack and say hello. That was all they had to do. He called again and again, but nobody answered. There was no static and no interference and he didn't hear a thing. He checked frenziedly through his own apparatus and tried again, but the air was as dead as deep space. He raced out to tell Dylan.
Dylan accepted it. He had known none of the people on Three and what he felt now was a much greater urgency to be out of here. He said hopeful things to Rossel, and then went out to the ship and joined the men in lightening her. About the ship at least, he knew something and he was able to tell them what partitions and frames could go and what would have to stay or the ship would never get off the planet. But even stripped down, it couldn't take them all. When he knew that, he realized that he himself would have to stay here, for it was only then that he thought of Bossio.
Three was dead. Bossio had gone down there some time ago and, if Three was dead and Bossio had not called, then the fact was that Bossio was gone too. For a long, long moment Dylan stood rooted in the snow. More than the fact that he would have to stay here was the unspoken, unalterable, heart-numbing knowledge that Bossio was dead—the one thing that Dylan could not accept. Bossio was the only friend he had. In all this dog-eared, aimless, ape-run Universe Bossio was all his friendship and his trust.
He left the ship blindly and went back to the settlement. Now the people were quiet and really frightened, and some of the women were beginning to cry. He noticed now that they had begun to look at him with hope as he passed, and in his own grief, humanly, he swore.
Bossio—a big-grinning kid with no parents, no enemies, no grudges—Bossio was already dead because he had come out here and tried to help these people. People who had kicked or ignored him all the days of his life. And, in a short while, Dylan would also stay behind and die to save the life of somebody he never knew and who, twenty-four hours earlier, would have been ashamed to be found in his company. Now, when it was far, far too late, they were coming to the army for help.
But in the end, damn it, he could not hate these people. All they had ever wanted was peace, and even though they had never understood that the Universe is unknowable and that you must always have big shoulders, still they had always sought only for peace. If peace leads to no conflict at all and then decay, well, that was something that had to be learned. So he could not hate these people.
But he could not help them either. He turned from their eyes and went into the radio shack. It had begun to dawn on the women that they might be leaving without their husbands or sons, and he did not want to see the fierce struggle that he was sure would take place. He sat alone and tried, for the last time, to call Bossio.
After a while, an old woman found him and offered him coffee. It was a very decent thing to do, to think of him at a time like this, and he was so suddenly grateful he could only nod. The woman said that he must be cold in that thin army thing and that she had brought along a mackinaw for him. She poured the coffee and left him alone.
They were thinking of him now, he knew, because they were thinking of everyone who had to stay. Throw the dog a bone. Dammit, don't be like that, he told himself. He had not had anything to eat all day and the coffee was warm and strong. He decided he might be of some help at the ship.
It was stripped down now and they were loading. He was startled to see a great group of them standing in the snow, removing their clothes. Then he understood. The clothes of forty people would change the weight by enough to get a few more aboard. There was no fighting. Some of the women were almost hysterical and a few had refused to go and were still in their cabins, but the process was orderly. Children went automatically, as did the youngest husbands and all the women. The elders were shuffling around in the snow, waving their arms to keep themselves warm. Some of them were laughing to keep their spirits up.
In the end, the ship took forty-six people.
Rossel was one of the ones that would not be going. Dylan saw him standing by the airlock holding his wife in his arms, his face buried in her soft brown hair. A sense of great sympathy, totally unexpected, rose up in Dylan, and a little of the lostness of thirty years went slipping away. These were his people. It was a thing he had never understood before, because he had never once been among men in great trouble. He waited and watched, learning, trying to digest this while there was still time. Then the semi-naked colonists were inside and the airlock closed. But when the ship tried to lift, there was a sharp burning smell—she couldn't get off the ground.
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What is the relationship like between Jeff and Ann?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Butterfly 9 by Donald Keith.
Relevant chunks:
Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
Question:
What is the relationship like between Jeff and Ann?
Answer:
|
[
"Jeff and Ann Elliott are a married couple. Ann is supportive of Jeff, and assures him that with their youth he will be able to rebuild his failed business. She reassures him throughout the story, even at points where it ultimately leads them into deeper trouble - such as when she tells him it wouldn’t hurt to try Mr. Snader’s time travel. \n\nJeff is protective of Ann on several occasions, like at the start of the story suggesting he would start a brawl at the restaurant if the stranger was interested in Ann’s beauty. He is also upset enough with his business struggles that he needs to take sleeping pills, of which Ann is concerned about the amount.\n\nThey remain together in the story until they are held in separate jail cells. They do not have any major disagreements in the story, and seem to enjoy their time together, only hoping to improve their lot by trying a risky time travel adventure.\n",
"Jeff and Ann have a loving and supportive relationship. When Jeff is feeling down on himself, Ann reminds him that he’s great at his job and that he has plenty of time to bounce back. She worries about the number of pills he’s taking, and she insists that he stop worrying about losing his lease. She is genuinely concerned for his mental health and his overall well-being. The couple can easily joke around with one another. When Ann suggests that Snader might be following them, she makes light of the situation by suggesting that it’s because he’s attracted to her. Jeff, in turn, offers to physically assault him if he tries anything. After meeting Mr. Snader, both Jeff and Ann have a good time playing along with the scenario they never imagined themselves being a part of. It doesn’t take a lot of prodding on Ann’s part to make Jeff go to the station with her and Snader. They both have a devil-may-care attitude that makes this adventure worth checking out. \n\nLater, when they find themselves in a heap of trouble and end up in separate jail cells, Jeff can only think of Ann. He worries about her being all alone for the night. \n",
"Jeff and Ann are like many married couples; when one is down or frightened, the other tries to build him up or assure him that all will be fine. They switch between these roles with each other easily, suggesting that they have been married a good while. Ann is supportive of Jeff’s career and his skills, assuring him that he will be able to start over and be successful again. She also teases him and makes humorous comments to lighten his mood. When they disagree with each other, it isn’t antagonistic. When Jeff wants to leave but Ann wants to hear what Snader has to say, she simply puts her hand on Jeff’s arm and says she hasn’t finished eating and would like to hear what Snader has to say. Jeff and Ann also play off of each other. When Ann jumps up to see what Snader wants to show them, Jeff’s pulse picks up as he entertains the idea, too. They make decisions together; when Jeff is undecided about going into the apartment building, he looks to Ann to see her reaction. When she says they might as well go inside and see what is there, Jeff agrees and goes along with her. They make a good team: Bullen’s comment that Jeff is going to make his company be the first to produce chromatics, Jeff’s takes affront at the man’s boldness, and Ann is likewise disturbed.\n",
"Jeff and Ann react differently to most things, but in a way where they are able to balance each other out. For instance, when they meet Snader at the beginning of the story, Jeff is frustrated with the interruption to his dinner and does not want to hear more about what he thinks is bogus, but Ann is curious and wants to hear Snader out, to be entertained if nothing else. Ann is very supportive of Jeff and the story starts with her trying to console him about the recent failure of his business venture as a lease on a building he was using had ended. While reassuring him, she reminds him that he is excellent at what he does and have no trouble starting up again, but Jeff is feeling very grumpy and sad about the entire situation. Jeff is very cautious, and is concerned when he hears Snader use his last name, because he had never given the man his name. Ann is more on the curious side, willing to give anything a try, including a method of time travel she only knew about from a stranger she encountered at a restaurant. She does get a little bit nervous once she has actually stepped inside the device, but the fear dissipates once she is outside again in a whole new world. Although Jeff starts the story upset, he remains mostly calm throughout the story and even when he is hesitant he does not become overwhelmed with fear at his situation. He and Ann both have to encounter some issues with their money not working, and sorting out what to make of their situation, but they support each other and keep each other calm throughout the story. "
] |
51167
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Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
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Describe the settings the story takes place in.
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Butterfly 9 by Donald Keith.
Relevant chunks:
Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
Question:
Describe the settings the story takes place in.
Answer:
|
[
"The story takes place on Earth, in the year 1957. It opens in a restaurant, and quickly transitions to Mr. Snader’s 4-D TRAVEL BEURO time travel station, inside of a “middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood.” They could hear traffic dimly in the station and see mountains out the windows on the horizon. \n\nThe time travelling room appears like a doctor's waiting room, with chair lined walls. There is a station sign - 701 - that hangs on the ceiling and two movie screens on the far ends of the room. Stepping through one screen would take them forwards in time, and one backwards in time. The Elliotts go to station 725, which Mr. Snader tells them is six years in the past.\n\nThe past is very unfamiliar, more industrialized with more highways than they remember. After travelling in a limousine, they transition to a 6th floor apartment house of a building with heavy carpets and soft lighting.\nThe final settings are a lunch counter, with unfamiliar food to the Elliotts, and finally their jail cells.\n",
"Ann and Jeff meet Greet Snader in a restaurant where they are having dinner and discussing Jeff’s business troubles. After meeting Snader, they follow him to a place called a “station.” They are surprised to find that it’s actually a moderately-sized home in a residential neighborhood. It doesn’t look suspicious at all. Jeff notes the mountains on the horizon and the warm breeze he feels before he steps inside. Snader uses a key hanging from his necklace to unlock the door, and once inside, he leads the couple to an area that looks a lot like a doctor’s waiting room. However, there are two screens hanging from the ceiling, and they are both playing moving pictures. There is a large plaque that says “701”, and Jeff and Ann do not know what to make of it. They are even more dumbfounded when Snader salutes some of the people on screen, and they wave back at him. \n\nAfter Jeff and Ann time travel, they exit the screen and find that the room looks very similar to the one they were just in. For a moment, they believe that Snader has tricked them. However, when they leave the building, they find a limousine out front instead of Jeff’s car. They drive through the city they call home, but none of the signs and landmarks are even remotely the same. \n\nAfter leaving Mr. Bullen’s office, they walk around town a little bit and quickly realize that the language on all the signage is different from how they speak. One reads, “'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!” Ann also notes that the women dress strangely, and it’s unlike anything she’s ever seen before. After noticing that all of the food at the restaurant looks slightly different than what they’re used to, they learn that they are actually in the town of Costa, in the state of West Goodland, in the country of Continental Federation. The language they are speaking is called Federal, and the cash they are using appears to be counterfeit. Although Jeff and Ann believed they would be returning to the exact same world they knew six years ago when Ann’s father was alive and he lived with them, they were misled by Snader. The couple was actually taken to a different dimension where events have unfolded in completely different ways.\n",
"The first setting is 1957 in a small, crowded, noisy, and hot restaurant. Jeff and Ann are having dinner, and Snader’s table is near enough that he can overhear the couple talking. This enables him to join their conversation and eventually lure them into time travel.\nSnader takes the Elliotts to the second setting, the station where he begins their time travel. The station is located in a mid-sized house in a middle-class neighborhood. Lights are glowing in the windows as they arrive, and outside they can hear the traffic on the boulevard a few blocks away. It is dusk, the weather is warm, and Jeff can see the mountains on the horizon. Snader unlocks the door, and they are greeted by a man at a desk in the hallway who sends them to another room. \nThis room is the station. A sign with the number 701 hangs from the middle of the ceiling, and there are two big screens like movies screens hanging on one wall, showing movement through a corridor with rows of seats like a railroad car. There are easy chairs along the walls, making it look like a doctor’s office waiting room. \nWhen they enter the screen, they are in the chair-lined corridor. Snader tells the Elliotts to sit, and they face a screen like the one in the room they had just left. The image on the screen makes it look as if they are racing through a dark tunnel toward a light at the far end. As they approach the light, they see a room like 701, but this one is 702. They exit at room 725 by stepping through the screen.\nStation 725 looks much like 701, but when they leave the room, there is a motherly old lady outside. Snader tells them they aren’t there for lodging, and they leave the house. Outside, Jeff notices his car is missing. Snader tells him it’s in the future. The street outside the house has different trees and houses than he remembered in the neighborhood with the 701 station. Telephone poles and streetlights also seem different. As the limousine pulls away from the curb, Jeff makes it a point to remember the street name, Green Thru-Way, and the block number, 800. Ann notices bars on the windows of the house. The limo heads onto a freeway where the boulevard should be, but the mountains are the same as always. Signs are unfamiliar and have strange wording like Rite Channel for Creepers and Yaw for Torrey Rushway.\nSnader takes the Elliotts to an apartment building near a shopping center with bright lights and lots of shoppers, neither of which are familiar. Snader escorts them inside the apartment building, riding the elevator to the sixth floor and traversing a heavily carpeted hallway with soft gold lights. Later they eat at a restaurant with unfamiliar food names and monetary units; their check is for 1/20. Finally, the Elliotts are imprisoned in a jail with smelly cells.\n\n",
"The story starts in a restaurant, but quickly moves to a house that is known as the 4-D Travel Beuro. This is a fairly typical, mid-range house of average size in a good neighborhood, which keeps it from sticking out in any way because nobody would be suspicious of it. Inside the house there are a number of ornate rooms locked behind closed doors, guarded by a bureau agent known as Peter Powers. Behind one of these doors is the room that serves as station 701 on this particular time groove, that has two large screens that show moving images of people who seem to be aware of the people standing in the room. People can easily step into these rooms and find themselves traveling on a time groove, and this is how Jeff and Ann travel to the time Snader is from. Once they have traveled through time, they expect to see the same suburban neighborhood but much of the context has changed: a different highway, different cars, and different houses. The people in this time use different currency and have different vocabulary than the people Jeff and Ann are used to. After some time in lockup, Jeff and Ann also encounter an apartment building. On the sixth floor of this building, they meet the man who hired Snader to find Jeff. There is an ornate drawing room where Jeff and Ann have a meeting with Septo Kersey and a man named Bullen who are hoping they can use Jeff's expertise to move ahead of the technological developments of their own time. Refusing to help, Jeff and Ann leave and are eventually captured for not having legal money, and the story ends with them in a holding cell at a local police station."
] |
51167
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Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
|
What is the relationship like between the Elliotts and Mr. Snader?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Butterfly 9 by Donald Keith.
Relevant chunks:
Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
Question:
What is the relationship like between the Elliotts and Mr. Snader?
Answer:
|
[
"Initially, the Elliotts find Mr. Snader to be peculiar with his mustache, facial scar, traces of a broken nose, and accented speech. Jeff is not interested in engaging with him, but Ann continues to deepen their conversation with him at the restaurant thinking that Mr. Snader is insane and she will humor his ideas.\n\nMr. Snader shows hints of being forceful to the Elliots throughout the story. His persuasiveness to come to his time travel station is forceful at times, he takes their arms to escort them into the future portal (as if he wants to ensure their compliance), and once they are roaming the city in the future Mr. Snader largely drops the act and stops being nice to the Elliots altogether (ignoring their requests for him to drive safely, and being curt with them to get them into his drop off spot with Mr. Bullen).\n\nThe Elliots are captivated by the silliness of Mr. Snader’s story at first, believing it is a magic trick right up until they travel into the past, and then seem largely blinded by their curiosity and excitement to think critically about how much danger they are really in. They acknowledge Mr. Snader is being deceitful at times, like when Jeff asks for his questions to be answered, but become so reliant on Mr. Snader’s support to get them back home that they remain with him. When Mr. Snader’s plan is revealed - that he has delivered the Eliotts into the past to be forced into labor to create a color television company - they feel betrayed by Mr. Snader.\n",
"The Elliots are initially wary of Snader. They look at him before he approaches them in the restaurant, and Ann tells her husband that she thinks she saw him outside in the parking lot. She wonders aloud if he has been following them. When he first starts up a conversation with them, Jeff immediately wants to leave, and it’s Ann who gets a kick out of the improbable dialogue they have. She wants to learn more about his insane-sounding ideas about time travel, although she doesn’t necessarily believe anything he’s saying at first. Both Jeff and Ann laugh at the card that Snader hands them because nearly every word is misspelled and to them he appears unprofessional. \n\nThey do not spend very much time with Snader, but they appear to trust him quite readily. They are skeptical about his promises and insist that it’s probably all fake, but they don’t associate the dishonesty with Snader personally. When Snader physically shows them how time traveling works by stepping in and out of the screens, Jeff and Ann are so excited that they actually link arms with the stranger. Moments later, Jeff calls him “brother”. Jeff initially insists that they take his car to go to the station, but when it disappears outside after they have time traveled, they have no problem getting into the backseat of a limousine and allowing Snader to drive them. When he brings them to a building they have never seen before, they wonder what could possibly be dangerous about it instead of insisting that they remain vigilant. Snader delivers Jeff and Ann right to the bad guys, and they never see it coming. Bullen’s guys thank Snader and mention the payment he will receive as a result of bringing them their victim, Jeff. Had Jeff and Ann refused to trust a stranger with a wild story about time traveling, they would not be stuck in another dimension. \n\n",
"The Elliotts are always somewhat suspicious of Mr. Snader, but they are intrigued by his claims and offer of time travel and curious enough to want to find out more about it. Snader uses Ann to draw the couple’s initial interest; she is more open to listening to him than Jeff is. Jeff is somewhat antagonistic to Snader, for example, commenting on the misspelled words on his business card and sometimes speaking to him derisively. Likewise, Snader mocks Jeff with his eyes. Ann is more open to Snader’s offer, asking him questions to learn more about it and commenting she wishes time travel could be true. Her receptiveness ignites Jeff’s desire to escape his worries for a while so that he is willing to learn more from Snader. When Snader takes them to the station, Ann expresses concerns to Jeff, but he believes they won’t be in danger. However, when Snader shows Jeff the screens and waves to people on them who wave back, the Elliotts are more convinced that what Snader offers is real. Snader is his nicest to Jeff just before they enter the time travel screen, but the closer they get to the apartment building, the less interested he is in answering questions and being polite. He orders them into the limousine and at one point issues a warning: “Tonight, you look where you are going.” Ann notices the station house has bars on it, and Jeff is suspicious enough that he makes a point of remembering the street names where the station is located so they will be able to find it again on their own. His tentative trust of Snader continues eroding when he realizes they are on a freeway that didn’t exist yet in the present. When he asks Snader if he’s brought them to the future instead of the past, Snader doesn’t even bother to answer. At the apartment, Jeff and Ann learn that Snader was paid to bring them there, and he “mockingly” waves at them as he leaves now that his job is done.\n\n\n",
"The relationship between the Elliotts and Mr. Snader is one with varying levels of distrust and suspicion but also some curiosity and genuine interest. When they all meet, Jeff is suspicious of everything that Mr. Snader says and does not thing it is worth his time to listen to Snader talk. Ann is curious, though, and wants to hear Snader out. It is not clear from this first part of the story what Snader thinks of the Elliots besides his interest in them as people who might be able to benefit from what he has to offer, at least on the surface. Once they all arrive at the \"4-D Travel Beuro\", as Ann has agreed to give Snader's time travel a try, the suspicion is continued. Because Jeff is an expert in color television, he is convinced everything he is seeing is some kind of visual trick and he wants to learn how it works. Jeff lets this color his interactions with Snader, and most of what he says to him has some audible distrust. At this point, Ann is also worried, once they step into the moving picture, but her fear dissipates once they are outside of the house in a different time. During this time travel, Jeff and Ann have had a lot of questions for Snader, but he is not answering any of them, at least not directly--this adds to the mistrust felt by the Elliotts. Once Snader drops the Elliots off with Kersey, they are understandably upset when they realize they have been tricked."
] |
51167
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Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
|
What is the significance of time in the story?
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After carefully reading the provided chunks, write a detailed response to the following question about Butterfly 9 by Donald Keith.
Relevant chunks:
Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
Question:
What is the significance of time in the story?
Answer:
|
[
"Time travel is suggested as a way to solve troubles. To fix regrets. Ironically, it is not this at all, because the way time travel works is not linear. Thus, it’s not possible to go back to an exact moment in your past and make a different decision.\n\nJeff is very impatient about the time they are spending with Mr. Snader, but continues to be roped into one thing and the next by convincing himself that they are in no real danger. There is a kind of tension between Jeff feeling like he is wasting time, but then allowing time to run on as their involvement with Mr. Snader deepens further and further until they lose 6 years of time completely.\n",
"At the beginning of the story, Jeff is worried that he has lost so much time on his failed business. Ann tries to convince him that he’s still plenty young, and he has many years to make back whatever he lost. Snader hears their conversation and butts in. Ann and Jeff don’t realize that he has already had his sights on them specifically because Jeff has been ordered by Mr. Bullen to improve his business. Bullen wants to make colored television before anyone else can, and in order to do that he needs someone from the future to give him the secrets. \n\nSnader makes Jeff and Ann believe they are going on an adventure to visit the past that they knew only six years ago, but he lies to them. They do not understand that the past does not work like a movie. When you travel to the past, the events change. This is because time is a dimension, and it is not linear. One of Bullen’s henchmen explains to Jeff that if he went back to 1865, there would no longer be a Civil War, and no one would know who Abraham Lincoln is. Landmarks, like the mountains outside of the station, will not change, but events will. ",
"Time is significant in the story because it is the basis for Jeff’s unhappiness and the couple’s reception of Snader’s travel offer. The reality of time as a dimension is why Jeff doesn’t recognize the past when he and Ann travel back. Jeff wishes he could go back in time five years and buy the building where he has been working for $2,000. It has just sold for $12,000, and now he has to leave and start his business over again. Snader’s offer of time travel appeals to Jeff and Ann because Jeff believes he’ll be able to buy the building. Snader’s assurance that they can be back in an hour helps persuade the couple to go with him to the nearby station. When they go into the screen to travel through time and Snader drives them along a freeway that didn’t exist in the present 1957 or five years earlier, Jeff is convinced that Snader has actually taken them to the future. Kersey tells them that they have traveled six years back in time before the development of chromatics (color television). Bullen wants Jeff to develop color television for his company, Continental Radioptic Combine, so that he will be first on the market with color TVs. When Jeff and Ann eat at the restaurant, and Jeff tries to pay with two one-dollar bills, the clerk calls the bills “stage money” and motions for a policeman to come to them. The officer looks at the bills and wonders aloud what the United States of America is and tells Jeff he is in Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. None of this makes sense to Jeff and Ann, and when Jeff is interrogated at the police station, the questions seems stupid to him. When Bullen’s lawyer arrives to get Jeff and Ann out of jail, he explains to Jeff that he did travel six years in the past but that time is a dimension rather than a stream of events. He indicates that if Jeff went back to 1865, the people there would know nothing of Lincoln or the Civil War. Therefore, Jeff’s idea that he could buy the building is incorrect because different events will be happening in 1952. \n",
"Time plays a few roles in this story. One is the motivation for Jeff and Ann to be interested in the time-travel technology in the first place: if Jeff could travel back in time a few years, he could sign a lease for a building for a much cheaper price that the going rate in his own time. Snader takes advantage of this fact to slip himself into the conversation the couple is having and offer his services in time travel, the particular mechanics of which are another major role of time in this story. Snader offers a time travel service that works with a technology too complicated for him to be able to explain, but for which we see two screens in one room that have moving images on them. These screens show people passing through the timestream and work as stations along a moving path of time, kind of like a train line. Once the group travels on this \"time groove\", they notice a number of differences in the \"new\" time, the past that Snader comes from. In fact, because of the differences, even though Ann and Jeff are in the past, they think that they must be far in the future because of how different things are. One of these is the construction of a highway that was not there during their time, and the other is that nobody has heard of the United States of America. Jeff figures that nobody has heard of where he comes from because they have moved so far forward in time, when it is really because in this version of the past, the United States did not develop in the way it did in Jeff's time. Because time affects the way language develops, it is interesting that one of the major differences between the time Jeff and Ann live in compared to the time Snader is from is the way people talk. In the past (that is, Snader's time), there are a lot of phrases and nouns that do not match the same words that Jeff and Ann have for those same concepts. The word for lawyer, for instance, differs. However, the languages have enough in common for the people from the different times to communicate with one another. The story ends with a discussion of how this time travel works, to show how differently the various people think about time. "
] |
51167
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Butterfly 9
By DONALD KEITH
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1957. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Jeff needed a job and this man had a job to offer—one where giant economy-size trouble had labels like fakemake, bumsy and peekage!
I
At first, Jeff scarcely noticed the bold-looking man at the next table. Nor did Ann. Their minds were busy with Jeff's troubles.
"You're still the smartest color engineer in television," Ann told Jeff as they dallied with their food. "You'll bounce back. Now eat your supper."
"This beanery is too noisy and hot," he grumbled. "I can't eat. Can't talk. Can't think." He took a silver pillbox from his pocket and fumbled for a black one. Those were vitamin pills; the big red and yellow ones were sleeping capsules. He gulped the pill.
Ann looked disapproving in a wifely way. "Lately you chew pills like popcorn," she said. "Do you really need so many?"
"I need something. I'm sure losing my grip."
Ann stared at him. "Baby! How silly! Nothing happened, except you lost your lease. You'll build up a better company in a new spot. We're young yet."
Jeff sighed and glanced around the crowded little restaurant. He wished he could fly away somewhere. At that moment, he met the gaze of the mustachioed man at the next table.
The fellow seemed to be watching him and Ann. Something in his confident gaze made Jeff uneasy. Had they met before?
Ann whispered, "So you noticed him, too. Maybe he's following us. I think I saw him on the parking lot where we left the car."
Jeff shrugged his big shoulders. "If he's following us, he's nuts. We've got no secrets and no money."
"It must be my maddening beauty," said Ann.
"I'll kick him cross-eyed if he starts anything," Jeff said. "I'm just in the mood."
Ann giggled. "Honey, what big veins you have! Forget him. Let's talk about the engineering lab you're going to start. And let's eat."
He groaned. "I lose my appetite every time I think about the building being sold. It isn't worth the twelve grand. I wouldn't buy it for that if I could. What burns me is that, five years ago, I could have bought it for two thousand."
"If only we could go back five years." She shrugged fatalistically.
"But since we can't—"
The character at the next table leaned over and spoke to them, grinning. "You like to get away? You wish to go back?"
Jeff glanced across in annoyance. The man was evidently a salesman, with extra gall.
"Not now, thanks," Jeff said. "Haven't time."
The man waved his thick hand at the clock, as if to abolish time.
"Time? That is nothing. Your little lady. She spoke of go back five years. Maybe I help you."
He spoke in an odd clipped way, obviously a foreigner. His shirt was yellow. His suit had a silky sheen. Its peculiar tailoring emphasized the bulges in his stubby, muscular torso.
Ann smiled back at him. "You talk as if you could take us back to 1952. Is that what you really mean?"
"Why not? You think this silly. But I can show you."
Jeff rose to go. "Mister, you better get to a doctor. Ann, it's time we started home."
Ann laid a hand on his sleeve. "I haven't finished eating. Let's chat with the gent." She added in an undertone to Jeff, "Must be a psycho—but sort of an inspired one."
The man said to Ann, "You are kind lady, I think. Good to crazy people. I join you."
He did not wait for consent, but slid into a seat at their table with an easy grace that was almost arrogant.
"You are unhappy in 1957," he went on. "Discouraged. Restless. Why not take trip to another time?"
"Why not?" Ann said gaily. "How much does it cost?"
"Free trial trip. Cost nothing. See whether you like. Then maybe we talk money." He handed Jeff a card made of a stiff plastic substance.
Jeff glanced at it, then handed it to Ann with a half-smile. It read:
4-D TRAVEL BEURO Greet Snader, Traffic Ajent
"Mr. Snader's bureau is different," Jeff said to his wife. "He even spells it different."
Snader chuckled. "I come from other time. We spell otherwise."
"You mean you come from the future?"
"Just different time. I show you. You come with me?"
"Come where?" Jeff asked, studying Snader's mocking eyes. The man didn't seem a mere eccentric. He had a peculiar suggestion of humor and force.
"Come on little trip to different time," invited Snader. He added persuasively, "Could be back here in hour."
"It would be painless, I suppose?" Jeff gave it a touch of derision.
"Maybe not. That is risk you take. But look at me. I make trips every day. I look damaged?"
As a matter of fact, he did. His thick-fleshed face bore a scar and his nose was broad and flat, as if it had been broken. But Jeff politely agreed that he did not look damaged.
Ann was enjoying this. "Tell me more, Mr. Snader. How does your time travel work?"
"Cannot explain. Same if you are asked how subway train works. Too complicated." He flashed his white teeth. "You think time travel not possible. Just like television not possible to your grandfather."
Ann said, "Why invite us? We're not rich enough for expensive trips."
"Invite many people," Snader said quickly. "Not expensive. You know Missing Persons lists, from police? Dozens people disappear. They go with me to other time. Many stay."
"Oh, sure," Jeff said. "But how do you select the ones to invite?"
"Find ones like you, Mr. Elliott. Ones who want change, escape."
Jeff was slightly startled. How did this fellow know his name was Elliott?
Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?"
"They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them."
"Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff.
"You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here."
Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything."
Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness—a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car."
Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body.
"This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick."
"First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said.
"Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way."
II
Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.
Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.
"'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den."
"No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said.
"There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect."
They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau."
The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key.
The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.
The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens—or were they giant television screens?—occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.
The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante , and to the right with the word Post .
Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.
"Somebody worked hard on this layout," he said to Snader. "What's it for?"
"Time travel," said Snader. "You like?"
"Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?"
Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.
Ann gasped. "It was just as if they saw us."
"They did," Snader said. "No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat."
"What's he supposed to be?" Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.
Snader showed his teeth. "That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work."
"What kind of work?" Jeff asked.
"Building the groove further back."
"Sounds like interesting work."
Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. "Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip."
Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, "Where do you propose to go? And how?"
Snader said, "Watch me. Then look at other wall."
He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.
Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader—and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.
"Simple," Snader said. "I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here."
"Brother, that's the best trick I've seen in years," Jeff said. "How did you do it? Can I do it, too?"
"I show you." Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. "Now," he said. "Step in."
Jeff submitted to Snader's pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.
In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.
The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.
Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."
"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.
"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."
Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.
"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long—how many years back are you taking us?"
Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."
For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."
"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would—"
Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.
"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."
He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.
Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.
"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."
Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.
In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."
He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.
"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.
The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.
"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.
Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.
"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."
Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."
"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."
"You are? Look around."
Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.
"Get in," Snader said curtly.
Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.
Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"
Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."
Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"
"What about it?"
"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."
"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street—" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner.
"The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."
III
They were headed back toward what should have been the boulevard. The car zoomed through a cloverleaf turn and up onto a broad freeway. Jeff knew for certain there was no freeway there in 1957—nor in any earlier year. But on the horizon, he could see the familiar dark bulk of the mountains. The whole line of moonlit ridges was the same as always.
"Ann," he said slowly, "I think this is for real. Somehow I guess we escaped from 1957. We've been transported in time."
She squeezed his arm. "If I'm dreaming, don't wake me! I was scared a minute ago. But now, oh, boy!"
"Likewise. But I still wonder what Snader's angle is." He leaned forward and tapped the driver on his meaty shoulder. "You brought us into the future instead of the past, didn't you?"
It was hard to know whether Snader was sleepy or just bored, but he shrugged briefly to show there was no reply coming. Then he yawned.
Jeff smiled tightly. "I guess we'll find out in good time. Let's sit back and enjoy the strangest ride of our lives."
As the limousine swept along through the traffic, there were plenty of big signs for turn-offs, but none gave any hint where they were. The names were unfamiliar. Even the language seemed grotesque. "Rite Channel for Creepers," he read. "Yaw for Torrey Rushway" flared at him from a fork in the freeway.
"This can't be the future," Ann said. "This limousine is almost new, but it doesn't even have an automatic gear shift—"
She broke off as the car shot down a ramp off the freeway and pulled up in front of an apartment house. Just beyond was a big shopping center, ablaze with lights and swarming with shoppers. Jeff did not recognize it, in spite of his familiarity with the city.
Snader bounded out, pulled open the rear door and jerked his head in a commanding gesture. But Jeff did not get out. He told Snader, "Let's have some answers before we go any further."
Snader gave him a hard grin. "You hear everything upstairs."
The building appeared harmless enough. Jeff looked thoughtfully at Ann.
She said, "It's just an apartment house. We've come this far. Might as well go in and see what's there."
Snader led them in, up to the sixth floor in an elevator and along a corridor with heavy carpets and soft gold lights. He knocked on a door.
A tall, silver-haired, important-looking man opened it and greeted them heartily.
"Solid man, Greet!" he exclaimed. "You're a real scratcher! And is this our sharp?" He gave Jeff a friendly but appraising look.
"Just what you order," Snader said proudly. "His name—Jeff Elliott. Fine sharp. Best in his circuit. He brings his lifemate, too. Ann Elliott."
The old man rubbed his smooth hands together. "Prime! I wish joy," he said to Ann and Jeff. "I'm Septo Kersey. Come in. Bullen's waiting."
He led them into a spacious drawing room with great windows looking out on the lights of the city. There was a leather chair in a corner, and in it sat a heavy man with a grim mouth. He made no move, but grunted a perfunctory "Wish joy" when Kersey introduced them. His cold eyes studied Jeff while Kersey seated them in big chairs.
Snader did not sit down, however. "No need for me now," he said, and moved toward the door with a mocking wave at Ann.
Bullen nodded. "You get the rest of your pay when Elliott proves out."
"Here, wait a minute!" Jeff called. But Snader was gone.
"Sit still," Bullen growled to Jeff. "You understand radioptics?"
The blood went to Jeff's head. "My business is television, if that's what you mean. What's this about?"
"Tell him, Kersey," the big man said, and stared out the window.
Kersey began, "You understand, I think, that you have come back in time. About six years back."
"That's a matter of opinion, but go on."
"I am general manager of Continental Radioptic Combine, owned by Mr. Dumont Bullen." He nodded toward the big man. "Chromatics have not yet been developed here in connection with radioptics. They are well understood in your time, are they not?"
"What's chromatics? Color television?"
"Exactly. You are an expert in—ah—colored television, I think."
Jeff nodded. "So what?"
The old man beamed at him. "You are here to work for our company. You will enable us to be first with chromatics in this time wave."
Jeff stood up. "Don't tell me who I'll work for."
Bullen slapped a big fist on the arm of his chair. "No fog about this! You're bought and paid for, Elliott! You'll get a fair labor contract, but you do what I say!"
"Why, the man thinks he owns you." Ann laughed shakily.
"You'll find my barmen know their law," Bullen said. "This isn't the way I like to recruit. But it was only way to get a man with your knowledge."
Kersey said politely, "You are here illegally, with no immigrate permit or citizen file. Therefore you cannot get work. But Mr. Bullen has taken an interest in your trouble. Through his influence, you can make a living. We even set aside an apartment in this building for you to live in. You are really very luxe, do you see?"
Jeff's legs felt weak. These highbinders seemed brutally confident. He wondered how he and Ann would find their way home through the strange streets. But he put on a bold front.
"I don't believe your line about time travel and I don't plan to work for you," he said. "My wife and I are walking out right now. Try and stop us, legally or any other way."
Kersey's smooth old face turned hard. But, unexpectedly, Bullen chuckled deep in his throat. "Good pop and bang. Like to see it. Go on, walk out. You hang in trouble, call up here—Butterfly 9, ask for Bullen. Whole exchange us. I'll meet you here about eleven tomorrow pre-noon."
"Don't hold your breath. Let's go, Ann."
When they were on the sidewalk, Ann took a deep breath. "We made it. For a minute, I thought there'd be a brawl. Why did they let us go?"
"No telling. Maybe they're harmless lunatics—or practical jokers." He looked over his shoulder as they walked down the street, but there was no sign of pursuit. "It's a long time since supper."
Her hand was cold in his and her face was white. To take her mind off their problem, he ambled toward the lighted shop windows.
"Look at that sign," he said, pointing to a poster over a display of neckties. "'Sleek neck-sashes, only a Dick and a dollop!' How do they expect to sell stuff with that crazy lingo?"
"It's jive talk. They must cater to the high-school crowd." Ann glanced nervously at the strolling people around them. "Jeff, where are we? This isn't any part of the city I've ever seen. It doesn't even look much like America." Her voice rose. "The way the women are dressed—it's not old-fashioned, just different."
"Baby, don't be scared. This is an adventure. Let's have fun." He pressed her hand soothingly and pulled her toward a lunch counter.
If the haberdasher's sign was jive, the restaurant spoke the same jargon. The signs on the wall and the bill of fare were baffling. Jeff pondered the list of beef shingles, scorchers, smack sticks and fruit chills, until he noticed that a couple at the counter were eating what clearly were hamburgers—though the "buns" looked more like tortillas.
Jeff jerked his thumb at them and told the waitress, "Two, please."
When the sandwiches arrived, they were ordinary enough. He and Ann ate in silence. A feeling of foreboding hung over them.
When they finished, the clerk gave him a check marked 1/20. Jeff looked at it thoughtfully, shrugged and handed it to the cashier with two dollar bills.
The man at the desk glanced at them and laughed. "Stage money, eh?"
"No, that's good money," Jeff assured him with a rather hollow smile.
"They're just new bills, that's all."
The cashier picked one up and looked at it curiously. "I'm afraid it's no good here," he said, and pushed it back.
The bottom dropped out of Jeff's stomach. "What kind of money do you want? This is all I have."
The cashier's smile faded. He caught the eye of a man in uniform on one of the stools. The uniform was dark green, but the man acted like a policeman. He loomed up beside Jeff.
"What's the rasper?" he demanded. Other customers, waiting to pay their checks, eyed Jeff curiously.
"I guess I'm in trouble," Jeff told him. "I'm a stranger here and I got something to eat under the impression that my money was legal tender. Do you know where I can exchange it?"
The officer picked up the dollar bill and fingered it with evident interest. He turned it over and studied the printing. "United States of America," he read aloud. "What are those?"
"It's the name of the country I come from," Jeff said carefully.
"I—uh—got on the wrong train, apparently, and must have come further than I thought. What's the name of this place?"
"This is Costa, West Goodland, in the Continental Federation. Say, you must come from an umpty remote part of the world if you don't know about this country." His eyes narrowed. "Where'd you learn to speak Federal, if you come from so far?"
Jeff said helplessly, "I can't explain, if you don't know about the United States. Listen, can you take me to a bank, or some place where they know about foreign exchange?"
The policeman scowled. "How'd you get into this country, anyway? You got immigrate clearance?"
An angry muttering started among the bystanders.
The policeman made up his mind. "You come with me."
At the police station, Jeff put his elbows dejectedly on the high counter while the policeman talked to an officer in charge. Some men whom Jeff took for reporters got up from a table and eased over to listen.
"I don't know whether to charge them with fakemake, bumsy, peekage or lunate," the policeman said as he finished.
His superior gave Jeff a long puzzled stare.
Jeff sighed. "I know it sounds impossible, but a man brought me in something he claimed was a time traveler. You speak the same language I do—more or less—but everything else is kind of unfamiliar. I belong in the United States, a country in North America. I can't believe I'm so far in the future that the United States has been forgotten."
There ensued a long, confused, inconclusive interrogation.
The man behind the desk asked questions which seemed stupid to Jeff and got answers which probably seemed stupid to him.
The reporters quizzed Jeff gleefully. "Come out, what are you advertising?" they kept asking. "Who got you up to this?"
The police puzzled over his driver's license and the other cards in his wallet. They asked repeatedly about the lack of a "Work License," which Jeff took to be some sort of union card. Evidently there was grave doubt that he had any legal right to be in the country.
In the end, Jeff and Ann were locked in separate cells for the night. Jeff groaned and pounded the bars as he thought of his wife, imprisoned and alone in a smelly jail. After hours of pacing the cell, he lay down in the cot and reached automatically for his silver pillbox. Then he hesitated.
In past weeks, his insomnia had grown worse and worse, so that lately he had begun taking stronger pills. After a longing glance at the big red and yellow capsules, he put the box away. Whatever tomorrow brought, it wouldn't find him slow and drowsy.
IV
He passed a wakeful night. In the early morning, he looked up to see a little man with a briefcase at his cell door.
"Wish joy, Mr. Elliott," the man said coolly. "I am one of Mr. Bullen's barmen. You know, represent at law? He sent me to arrange your release, if you are ready to be reasonable."
Jeff lay there and put his hands behind his head. "I doubt if I'm ready. I'm comfortable here. By the way, how did you know where I was?"
"No problem. When we read in this morning's newspapers about a man claiming to be a time traveler, we knew."
"All right. Now start explaining. Until I understand where I am, Bullen isn't getting me out of here."
The lawyer smiled and sat down. "Mr. Kersey told you yesterday—you've gone back six years. But you'll need some mental gymnastics to understand. Time is a dimension, not a stream of events like a movie film. A film never changes. Space does—and time does. For example, if a movie showed a burning house at Sixth and Main, would you expect to find a house burning whenever you returned to that corner?"
"You mean to say that if I went back to 1865, I wouldn't find the Civil War was over and Lincoln had been assassinated?"
"If you go back to the time you call 1865—which is most easily done—you will find that the people there know nothing of a Lincoln or that war."
Jeff looked blank. "What are they doing then?"
The little man spread his hands. "What are the people doing now at Sixth and Main? Certainly not the same things they were doing the day of the fire. We're talking about a dimension, not an event. Don't you grasp the difference between the two?"
"Nope. To me, 1865 means the end of the Civil War. How else can you speak of a point in time except by the events that happened then?"
"Well, if you go to a place in three-dimensional space—say, a lake in the mountains—how do you identify that place? By looking for landmarks. It doesn't matter that an eagle is soaring over a mountain peak. That's only an event. The peak is the landmark. You follow me?"
"So far. Keep talking."
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